Excellent Article on Chronic Pain Treatment...or lack of.

Hi all...

Sorry it's been a while since I've been posting like I should. Added to other reasons, now my computer is hosed up until grandson gets the 'parasite' out that has infected it...again!...arrggggg

So I hijacked hubby's to get back in the flow of things on the forum.

I was searching for information while answering someone's questions and came across an amazingly written article on the web site of "Anesthesia & Analgesia" which is part of the International Anesthesia and Research Society. This appears to be a trade group like the AMA. Anyway, the article I found deals with the 'Right' to pain control by the medical profession. It's titled "Pain Management: A Fundamental Human Right". I found it not only informative but encouraging. I will confess I haven't read the entire article....it's very long! But it's well broken down into titled segments so you can read about those you are most interested in if you choose. Below are highlights from the abstract of the article and a link if you want to check it out.

Hope this helps someone...
Chutz

www.anesthesia-analgesia.org/content/105/1/205.full

Abstract

This article surveys worldwide medical, ethical, and legal trends and initiatives related to the concept of pain management as a human right. This concept recently gained momentum with the 2004 European Federation of International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) Chapters-, International Association for the Study of Pain- and World Health Organization-sponsored “Global Day Against Pain,” where it was adopted as a central theme. We survey the scope of the problem of unrelieved pain in three areas, acute pain, chronic noncancer pain, and cancer pain, and outline the adverse physical and psychological effects and social and economic costs of untreated pain. Reasons for deficiencies in pain management include cultural, societal, religious, and political attitudes, including acceptance of torture. ...............
We conclude that, because pain management is the subject of many initiatives within the disciplines of medicine, ethics and law, we are at an “inflection point” in which unreasonable failure to treat pain is viewed worldwide as poor medicine, unethical practice, and an abrogation of a fundamental human right.

On October 16, 1846, at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, the anesthetic effect of ether was first demonstrated to a public audience. Upon hearing the news, Oliver Wendell Holmes, the celebrated writer and physician, triumphantly stated “… the deepest furrow in the knotted brow of agony has been smoothed forever.” Yet 60 yr later, exactly a century ago, in his preface to The Doctor's Dilemma, Shaw wrote: “When doctors write or speak to the public about operations, they imply that chloroform has made surgery painless. People who have been operated upon know better” (1).

Today at the dawn of the 21st century, the best available evidence indicates a major gap between an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the pathophysiology of pain and widespread inadequacy of its treatment. .........................
Yet the growing number of statements and initiatives on the necessity for pain management issuing from inside and outside the medical community amount to a “call to arms” based upon three propositions. First, pain, whether acute or chronic, is inadequately addressed for a variety of cultural, attitudinal, educational, political, religious, and logistical reasons. Second, inadequately treated pain has major physiological, psychological, economic, and social ramifications for patients, their families, and society. Third, it is within the capacity of all developed and many developing countries to significantly improve the treatment of pain. This review surveys current strategies and initiatives that address the under-treatment of pain from the disciplines of medicine, law, and ethics. We present evidence that medicine is at an inflection point, at which a coherent international consensus is emerging: the unreasonable failure to treat pain is poor medicine, unethical practice, and is an abrogation of a fundamental human right.