Pain Medications:
Relief for Some Abused By Others www.theacpa.org
Sufferers of Chronic Pain Use Medications That Are Commonly Abused by Others; Information on Safe Use, Storage and Disposal, Survey Data on American Attitudes
Penney Cowan, Founder and DR. David Provanzano, board president, American Chronic Pain Assoc. Pain is an important sensation, alerting you to possible injury.
Chronic pain is different. Chronic pain persists for weeks, months, even years and 100 million people in America are currently living with it. The good news is there are ways to treat chronic pain.
But the medications, opioids like Vicodin, OxyContin, Percodan, Percocet, that offer some relief are among the most-abused and misused in the nation.
Drug overdose death rates in the United States are at an all-time high. The rates of unintentional poisoning from prescription opioids, sedatives and tranquilizers in the U.S. has surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of unintentional injury death. In addition, a majority of hospitalizations due to opioid overdoses are paid for with public funds. This leaves people who need these medications in a difficult situation when seeking appropriate pain care.
Penney Cowen, founder of the American Chronic Pain Association (ACPA), and Dr. David Provanzano, ACPA President of the Board of Directors
Penney Cowan is the founder and executive director of the American Chronic Pain Association (ACPA). Cowan lives with chronic pain and established the ACPA in 1980.
The ACPA provides peer support and education in pain management skills to people with pain and their families. Over the past 27 years, Cowan has been an advocate and consumer representative for pain issues. Dr. David Provenzano is president of the board of the ACPA. He is the Executive Medical Director of the Ohio Valley General Hospital Institute for Pain Diagnostics and Care. He has served as a principal investigator on multiple research studies, authored a book chapter and published many articles. He has lectured at numerous national meetings on the management of acute and chronic pain.
This interview is sponsored by The Chronic Pain Association.
