Narcotic Medications

Pain management with medications is often necessary in the acute injury setting. No matter how much ice you apply, the pain does not go away. You try over the counter non-steroidal anti-inflammatories without any significant relief.

At this point, you may need to take the narcotic pain medication prescribed by your doctor.

In our practice, we will prescribe pain narcotic medications for certain acute conditions. We will also prescribe these medications in the post operation phase.

But, for a certain percentage of patients, the pain becomes chronic. The pain persists more than 6 months and can no longer be controlled by the lower doses of narcotic medications, NSAIDS and occasional cortizone shots. Your physician may have determined that unfortunately, a surgical option is unpredictable and may not improve your condition. At this point, you will need to learn to manage the pain with medications,and activities modifications. Hopefully, you will not need increasingly stronger medications.

But, if you do need these medications on a chronic basis, you will need to establish with a pain management clinic. These clinics specialize in treating patients with chronic pain medication needs. It is highly regulated scenario currently, as unfortunately there has been significant abuse of these medications.

For patients in these chronic pain conditions, a multi-disciplinary approach may be necessary to control the factors leading to the pain.

But please understand the goal for a chronic pain condition. The pain is being MANAGED. Unfortunately, it means that the pain will always be there is some fashion. Otherwise, you would go to a Pain Cure Clinic, which for the chronic pain conditions, do not exist.

Last modified: October 22, 2019