Philly’s opioid addiction crisis is constantly evolving. Local health care workers and researchers explain some of the latest substances, side effects and treatments.
Among adolescents, boys are more likely to die of an overdose than girls, and using combinations of drugs substantially raises the risk of an overdose.
Undertreated pain can result in unnecessary suffering and a greater likelihood of long-term chronic pain.
Investigators at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute reported Black and Hispanic patients who had poor-prognosis cancer were less likely than white patients to receive opioid medications.
Making them pay is important but it’s not going to stop drugmakers from endangering public health.
Non-opioid directives allow patients to refuse opioids in all health care settings. For surgical procedures that require anesthesia, however, this may do more harm than good.
To help combat the opioid crisis, researchers have developed a tool, known as SOURCE, which taps national data on opioids to track stages of use and misuse, including use initiation, treatment, relapse, and death by overdose.
Drug manufacturers often shun the use of placebos in clinical trials. But research suggests that placebos could play an important role in the treatment of depression, pain and other maladies.
The number of fatal drug overdoses in the US over a 12-month period has surpassed 100,000 for the first time. Fentanyl is the main driver of the spike in deaths.
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