Policy CDC issues new guidelines on prescribing opioids for pain

[Burnt Offerings]

Issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday, the new recommendations incorporate new science developed since the last set of guidelines were released in 2016, at the height of the country's opioid epidemic.

For example, the guidelines now offer advice on short-term pain relief as well as treatment of chronic pain, Christopher Jones, acting director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, said during a media briefing.

Doctors can also find advice on how to best taper off opioid use, if it's determined that a patient should no longer be on the medications, Jones added.

But most importantly, the 2022 guidelines are being presented not as hard-and-fast rules, but as a means to help doctors and patients decide the best course of treatment for their pain, Jones noted.

MSN

Seems like a positive development, at least according to the radio report I heard regarding it.

 

[thegreenhand]

I saw this headline today between classes and was gonna post it when I got home

It definitely seems promising, but I’m yet to read the details.

Of course, it’s still an open question if physicians will actually take these guidelines to heart

 

[LucidSDreamr]

MSN

Seems like a positive development, at least according to the radio report I heard regarding it.

The problem is that the DEA is still (and will forever) arrest doctors according to 2016s retracted guidelines that caused the fent epidemic.

As long as the DEA keeps arresting innocent doctors, sending their patients to an early grave....doesn't matter what the FDA does, nothing will change.

 

[Burnt Offerings]

I think you're being too negative. The DEA is an arm of the state and is therefore subject to political pressures, it is not immune from political pressures (as much as they'd probably like to project that image). There is no way I believe the notion that the DEA is "forever" going to be arresting doctors due to guidelines issued in 2016 into perpetuity. Yeah they're on the wrong side on this issue and most likely always will be. But eventually enough time will have passed between us and the epicenter of the opioid epidemic, this issue will get reevaluated and hopefully some positive reforms will get put in place

That's why I thought that this was an encouraging development. It's about as encouraging as policy news gets regarding this one specific issue nowadays, and even though it's still just a trickle in politics and popular culture, it's noticeably more than, say, seven or eight years ago, when you straight up wouldn't be able to find any kind of "mainstream" body endorsing anything other than a totally draconian, sometimes even prohibitionist mindset regarding the use of opioid drugs in medical contexts. It was wall-to-wall hysteria in the media over the issue and pain management patients pretty much didn't factor into the picture at all...instead it was just body counts and lurid tales of how some wholesome all-American boy from the 'burbs got prescribed Vicodin once and now slams at least a bun a day.