hydro vs oxy

The difference are that they are two different meds. The hydrocodone in the vicodin, or lorcet, is a short acting narcotic medication for pain control. It is combined with tylenol in differerent milligrams. It typically lasts 3-6hours.  The oxycodone is in a short acting medication also, and is combined with tylenol. Oxycodone is also available in an extended release form where it works for 12 hours at a time. This med is oxycodone ER. It is usally used for chronic or long lasting pain. Where as the vicodin, or percocet for short term results.

I personally take both...though I try to space them out or I absolutely must find a place to sleep!

The way my PM explained it to me........... I was asking for a higher dose of hydromorphone and he told me "we aren't going to chase this thing with narcotics" and then added oxycodone as a breakthrough med. I was scared to start a new one and he explained that the meds work on different pain receptors in the brain. Ok.....so I finally tried the oxycodone and it worked so much better!

I have tried oxymorphone (that's the extended release of the hydromorphone med Opana ER) and it was way too much for me. For some reason it worked wonderfully for the first 6 hours and then kind of dumped the rest of the med into my system. I don't know why, but it just isn't the med for me. It felt like an OD and I never want to take one again! I even took the bottle back in and gave it to the DR.

I know when I took hyrdro only lasts 4 hrs but percocet lasted me 6 hrs.

The tylenol is optional. Typically you'll see it written as oxycodone 15mg/7.5 ... the second set of numbers it the accetametaphine ... which is basically an anti-inflamatory; ie tylenol.

With long term use of the narcotic with the antiinflamatory, and all the concerns lately about long term use vs effect of the anti-inflamatory, when they renewed my percoset perscription (which is what I take four times a day) my doctor simply removed the anti-inflamatory as it didn't prove to be giving me any added bennefit. The reason it's normally included is simple .... usually when there's pain, there's swelling, but when you're dealing with a CRPS patient it's our nerves that are affected and faulty, so swelling is usually a side effect of something else.