Public Health: deaths from misuse of prescription pain care

An estimated 70 million Americans suffer from chronic pain and many find relief by using narcotics prescribed by their physicians.

But crucially, national studies report that 85 percent of these patients use the medications appropriately.

Dr. Mark Romanoff of Southeast Pain Care says physicians must be extremely careful when prescribing narcotics to ensure the patient's well-being and to achieve the desired results while avoiding negative results such as addiction, accidental overdoses or death.

Speaking on Medicine and Society, produced by University of North Carolina-Charlotte Cable Television, Romanoff says that that patients bear the responsibility to use prescriptions only for their intended purpose; to secure them away from others; never to share medications; and to return unused portions to their physicians for disposal.

"If we all work together responsibly, patients can receive appropriate and effective pain management and we can avoid these needless deaths,"Romanoff said.

His argument is backed up by new information from two websites aimed at reducing the abuse of prescribed medicines. Several dvisions of The Blue Cross (in the USA this is for people; in the UK, Blue Cross is for animals) and Blue Shield have launched BeSmartBeWell.Com which aims to inform parents of the increasing dangers of abuse of drugs prescribed to them but hijacked by their teenage children who give them names like "Vikes," "Dance Fever," "French Fries." They say "each year, nearly 2 million teenagers abuse prescription drugs."