Tag: chronic pain

Long term opiate use safe; One woman’s experience with Savella

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2009-12-03

6:55 pm

6 Comments on Long term opiate use safe; One woman’s experience with Savella

Fibromyalgia, Pain, Resources, treatments

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There are two great arti­cles from Karen Lee Richards in Health­Cen­tral’s Chron­ic Pain Con­nec­tion newslet­ter today.

The first, Long-Term Opi­oid Ther­a­py – What Are the Effects?, brings us the results of Dr. For­est Ten­nan­t’s ground-break­ing study. He eval­u­at­ed 24 chron­ic pain patients from 30 to 79 years old who had been using opi­oids for 10 to 35 years, and “con­clud­ed that the sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments in qual­i­ty of life and phys­i­cal func­tion­ing from opi­oid ther­a­py are so pos­i­tive they out­weigh any neg­a­tive com­pli­ca­tions, which can be eas­i­ly managed.”

Almost all of the patients (22 of 24) said their pain had per­ma­nent­ly decreased over time. And the vast major­i­ty (20 of 24) felt their opi­oids still pro­vid­ed the same relief as when they start­ed treat­ment. All of the patients report­ed one or more func­tions or activ­i­ties they can do now that they could­n’t do pri­or to begin­ning opi­oid ther­a­py (i.e., get out of bed every­day, take walks, shop or vis­it friends). 

The arti­cle details the patients’ diag­noses and gives fur­ther infor­ma­tion, and I encour­age you to read the rest of it. While the study was small and obvi­ous­ly needs to be repeat­ed with a larg­er group, this is mar­velous news, and I for one am very grate­ful for Dr. Ten­nan­t’s work and the par­tic­i­pa­tion of his subjects.

I have to say that I find Health­Cen­tral’s sites to be gen­er­aly decent, but the Chron­ic Pain Con­nec­tion is out­stand­ing. I encour­age you to vis­it and sub­scribe to the newsletter.

Next, in One Patien­t’s Expe­ri­ence with Savel­la for Fibromyal­gia, Richards brings us detailed feed­back from one of her con­tacts, Bren­da, who has been tak­ing the new drug for sev­en weeks. Many of us have heard of Savel­la, but so few have had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to try it or know any­one who have that this arti­cle is very help­ful in mak­ing a deci­sion as to whether or not to ask our physi­cians for it. After read­ing about Bren­da’s advice regard­ing insur­ance expe­ri­ences, deal­ing with side effects, and pos­i­tive results, I for one will be talk­ing to my neu­rol­o­gist about a tri­al pack.