Persistent pain in older adults is common, and associated with substantial morbidity. Optimal management starts with assessment, including pain presence, intensity, characteristics, and interference; painful conditions; pain behaviors; pain-related morbidity; pain treatments; and coping style. Treatment incorporates analgesics demonstrated to decrease pain and improve a patient's sense of well-...

Background Drug overdose mortality, particularly involving opioid analgesics, has risen steadily over the past two decades and is now the leading cause of injury death in the United States. Benzodiazepines are commonly prescribed concurrently to individuals receiving opioid analgesics. Little is known about the association between benzodiazepine-prescribing patterns and overdose mortality in th...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the prescribing of analgesic agents in a defined South African patient population. DESIGN Retrospective drug utilisation study. SETTING Prescribing behaviour of a sample of 50 dispensing doctors in Port Elizabeth. Data were obtained from a medical aid which used a formulary system. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Percentage of central nervous system drugs that analgesics co...

This study updates a previous analysis of trends in medical use and abuse of opioid analgesics, and provides data from 1997 through 2002. Two research questions were evaluated: 1) What are the trends in the medical use and abuse of frequently prescribed opioid analgesics used to treat severe pain, including fentanyl, hydromorphone, meperidine, morphine, and oxycodone? 2) What is the abuse trend...

BACKGROUND Vocal local (VL) is a non-pharmacological pain management technique for gynecological procedures. In Africa, it is usually used in combination with pharmacological analgesics. However, analgesics are associated with side-effects, and can be costly and subject to frequent stock-outs, particularly in remote rural settings. We compared the effectiveness of VL + local anesthesia + analge...

BACKGROUND Primary care pharmacological management of new musculoskeletal conditions is not consistent, despite guidelines which recommend prescribing basic analgesics before higher potency medications such as opioids or non-steroidal inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).The objective was to describe pharmacological management of new musculoskeletal conditions and determine patient characteristics assoc...