Pain Medication

Pain is the No. 1 reason people seek medical help. Acute-onset pain suggests a medical emergency and immediate medical assistance is necessary. Chronic pain has a significant impact on human life. According to Dr. Zhaoming Chen, the best way to control chronic pain is a multidisciplinary approach that includes complementary and alternative medicine. Chen, chairman of the American Association of Integrative Medicine and a physician at St. Agnes Hospital, offers several easy ways to help people deal with pain.

Vernon Faid still marvels that he never experienced any pain after his kidney operation last year.And he says he owes it all to the analgesia pump his doctor prescribed for pain relief."

Prescription drug abuse has increased in Harford County, according to Joe Strovel, director of addiction services for the Harford County Health Department. In the past year, he said, he has noticed an increase in the use of painkiller OxyContin and other prevalent prescription drugs such as the cough-suppressant hydrocodone. It has become a big problem, he said. Many younger people abuse prescription drugs thinking they won't become addicted, he said, but they develop a physical dependency to the drug.

HACKENSACK, N.J. - America's poor and minorities live harder lives, judging by income levels. They also die more painful deaths. African-Americans make up only 8 percent of participants in hospice care, which is aimed at providing comfort to dying patients and their families, while 83 percent are white. Minorities are also less likely in general to receive pain medication, regardless of their incomes or insurance status. One reason is that minorities fear doctors may attempt to make their deaths easier instead of aggressively trying to keep them alive, experts said at a recent conference titled "Palliative Care for the Medically Underserved."

In a story about pain in The Sun yesterday, Ada Jacox, co-chair of a national panel on pain medication, was incorrectly identified as Ms. Jacox. Dr. Jacox, a registered nurse at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, has a Ph.D. in nursing.The Sun regrets the errors.WASHINGTON -- Millions of Americans suffer unacceptably high levels of pain after surgery each year because they receive too little or the wrong medication, according to a federal report released yesterday.What's more, doctors have been equipped to prevent serious post-operative pain for the last 30 years.

It wasn't an Olympic moment, but Ann Morrill felt triumphant.Ten hours after she left surgery on a gurney, she walked around her room while holding her brand-new 8-pound baby Elizabeth Ann in her arms.The knife-like abdominal pains that often follow Caesarean sections can make scenes like this impossible for another day or two. But at Johns Hopkins Hospital, doctors have found that patients feel less pain, get on their feet faster and leave the hospital earlier if they are given control over their own pain medication.

News reports are so often filled with stories of medical miracles that we frequently overlook the glaring failures that stare us in the face. At long last, a federal panel has fingered one of the most scandalous -- the failure of the medical profession to pay attention to something as basic as relieving pain in cancer patients.Guidelines released by the Department of Health and Human Services are designed to steer the medical community toward better pain-relief practices, particularly by treating pain early and aggressively.

In the memoir "Boy," Roald Dahl wrote of how, when he was very small, his tonsils were pinched out, in the doctor's office, without benefit of any anesthetic.And this reporter's own mother never forgot the horrifying pain she endured in childhood when a doctor lanced her middle ear without anesthetic.Pain hurts more when you are small, doctors say. Trauma triggered by the sting of a needle or a cut being sewn up without anesthetic can make kids distrustful of both parents and doctors, and even set up a lifelong aversion to medical procedures.

Pain is the body's early warning system. Like a smoke detector that won't stop shrieking, it alerts you that something is wrong.Without pain you might do yourself serious damage before you realized it.Burns, cuts, blisters, sprains, breaks and bellyaches are just a few of the causes of pain that get your attention and motivate you to take action. That's certainly a benefit. But there is a downside, especially if the pain doesn't go away.Unrelenting pain can take over a person's life, making it hard to think, work or carry on. It can delay recovery from surgery and promote complications.

Anxious husbands and a small army of attending medical professionals aren't the only ones joining laboring women in hospital delivery rooms in the Baltimore region. A growing number of expectant mothers are hiring female birth companions -- doulas -- to provide round-the-clock physical, emotional and informational support during labor and delivery. This has led to a ten-fold increase in their ranks statewide in the past decade. A doula, which means "woman's servant" in Greek, is different from a midwife, who is a trained medical professional who performs clinical tasks or diagnoses medical conditions.