Pain Management in Opioid-Addicted Patients Medicine Research Paper (Research Paper Sample)

Pain Management in Opioid-Addicted Patients
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Chapter 1-Conceptual Phase
Pain Management in Opioid-Addicted Patients
Since 1980, there has been a substantial increase in the prescription of chronic opioid therapy in the developed countries (Arnold & Julie Childers, 2017). The prescription of opioid therapy refers to the administration of opioids for at least 90 days. Opioids are clinically recommended for cancer treatment and are rapidly gaining popularity in the chronic malignant pain treatment. A study conducted in the United States established that chronic opioid therapy for pain management was being administered in approximately 3% of the patients in the primary care environment (Arnold & Julie Childers, 2017). Episodes of acute pain are always common among the patients receiving chronic opioid therapy for management of pain, and this mostly occurs due to a surgical procedure or a new injury. Acute pain is also common in patients receiving chronic opioid therapy maintenance because of addiction and the patients chronically using opioids which have been illegally obtained or inappropriately prescribed (Arnold & Julie Childers, 2017).
The primary objectives of administering acute pain medications in patients chronically using opioids are preventing withdrawal, providing sufficient analgesia, and avoid activating a relapse or complicating the addiction disorder especially for the patients with a medical history of substance abuse disorder (Arnold & Julie Childers, 2017). The paper comprehensively discusses the methods of managing pain in opioid-addicted patients. This is because the abuse and misuse of opioids continue to burgeon according to a study conducted on 196 patients in the United States. The research established that 32% of the population engaged in opioid abuse which adversely affected their health (Cheatle et al., 2014).
Literature Review
The available evidence shows that more than 100 million adults in the U.S are living with chronic pain (Cooney & Broglio, 2017). Research conducted in the United States in 2015 established that 27 million American citizens above the age of 12 years abused an illicit drug within the previous month (Cooney & Broglio, 2017). Marijuana topped the list of the study as the most commonly abused drug with more than 3.8 million users with the non-medical use of opioid coming the second. Furthermore, the research pointed out that the number of deaths resulting from opioid abuse was three times greater in 2015 (>15, 000) when compared with the deaths recorded in 2000. Additionally, the study established that heroin overdose deaths were 13, 000 in 2015 which is four times greater than the deaths witnessed in 2010. The use of illicitly manufactured fentanyl was pointed as an emerging problem and was found to be more dangerous than the pharmaceutical fentanyl hence leading to the increasing morbidity (Cooney & Broglio, 2017). More than 2 million patients sought treatment for complications arising from substance use disorder inclusive of opioids (Cooney & Broglio, 2017).