To Your Health
October, 2022 (Vol. 16, Issue 10) |
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Still the Wrong Choice
By Editorial Staff
The years since the opioid epidemic was exposed have seen the release of multiple guidelines recommending conservative care, including chiropractic, for managing pain in conjunction with or before resorting to pain medication.
While it remains unclear whether such guidelines have moved the needle toward nondrug options, a new study suggests that when it comes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain (released in 2016), one result has been an increase in non-opioid pain medication use.
Published in JAMA Network Open, the study used claims data (2011-2018) from adults (ages 18 and older) with two years of continuous commercial insurance enrollment, and no cancer or palliative care claims (serious health issues that might raise the need for pain medication).
Data were analyzed in March 2022, revealing that among nearly 16 million patients who qualified for inclusion, while past-year opioid exposure decreased, nonopioid pain medication prescribing increased by 3.0 percent in postguideline year one, 8.7 percent in postguideline year 2 and 9.7 percent in postguideline year three compared to preguideline estimates.
While the study authors actually conclude that their findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the CDC guideline (decreased opioid prescribing), your chiropractor will be the first to point out that they're missing the point. By all accounts, chronic pain continued to be managed with medication. (After all, if nondrug options had been used more, one would have expected prescribing rates of both opioids and non-opioids to decrease.)
In a press release from the Foundation for Chiropractic Progress, a nonprofit chiropractic organization dedicated to educating patients and the health care industry about the value of chiropractic, F4CP President Sherry McAllister, DC, commented: "[S]imply replacing one drug with another is not the answer to safe, effective, long-term pain management. Instead, patients suffering from acute or chronic pain should seek out natural, drug-free methods first to improve symptoms and quality of life without the risk of dangerous pharmacologic side effects or dependency." Wise words indeed – now who's willing to listen?
