CDC Guidelines on Prescribing Opioids Has Patients Worried

1. DRAFT CDC GUIDELINES ON PRESCRIBING OPIOIDS HAS PATIENTS WORRIED The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been at the center of a controversy brewing over updated prescribing guidelines for physicians. The CDC guidelines offer recommendations for primary care physicians who prescribe opioid painkillers to patients with chronic pain problems. This has been an area of concern for the CDC and other national public health figures for some time. In fact, Thomas Frieden, the director of the CDC recently stated that “Addressing the prescription overdose epidemic has become one of the CDC’s top priorities.” Central to the debate over the draft CDC guidelines is the need to weigh risks versus benefits for patients. UNDERSTANDING THE GUIDELINES AND THEIR POTENTIAL IMPACT The CDC guidelines were drafted by a group of experts in pain medicine and related fields. The experts reviewed scientific evidence about the use of opioid painkillers as well as guidelines promoted by other organizations. They distilled this evidence into draft guidelines intended to help primary care physicians navigate their decisions about prescribing opioids to patients. The draft CDC guidelines soon became the source of great controversy. On one side of the debate are patients, who worry that the guidelines may make it more difficult for them to obtain opioid medications needed to control their chronic pain. On another side are public health officials concerned about statistics showing that rates of prescriptions for opioid painkillers are up 300% since 1999. Still others are concerned that pharmaceutical companies, or other special interest groups, are exerting undue influence on what is intended to be an objective, scientific process of determining best practices for opioid prescribing. Article Source: https://www.opiates.com/blog/guidelines-prescribing-opioids/