The FDA wants to hear from people with chronic pain, and is hosting a meeting on July 9, 2018 to collect public input. I have chronic pain, and I know that many of you do as well. This meeting is worth your time.
Management of chronic pain was not the focus of much medical or scientific attention
until the 1960s. While prescription practices changed in the 1980s and 1990s with the
advent of synthetic opioids, including
oxycontin, it wasn’t until the beginning of this decade that
pain research and policy became the focus of
heavy federal attention.
Recently, that attention seems to have
shifted to the opioid crisis, sometimes
at the expense of people with chronic pain. There is collective emphasis on data points such as more than 40,000 people died of opioid overdose in 2016. But I had to look pretty hard to find out that only
one-third of those overdoses involved a prescription opioid, and many involved another drug as well. It is not in the least bit surprising to me that patients are suffering because the
current climate has made it hard, if not impossible, for people in pain to receive appropriate and effective treatment.
