Pain Medicine

Some people suffer from chronic, debilitating disorders for which no conventional treatment brings relief. Can marijuana ease their symptoms? Would it be breaking the law to turn to marijuana as a medication? There are few sources of objective, scientifically sound advice for people in this situation. Most books about marijuana and medicine attempt to promote the views of advocates or opponents. To fill the gap between these extremes, authors Alison Mack and Janet Joy have extracted critical findings from a recent Institute of Medicine study on this important issue, interpreting them for a general audience. Marijuana As Medicine? provides patientsâ€"as well as the people who care for themâ€"with a foundation for making decisions about their own health care. This empowering volume examines several key points, including: Whether marijuana can relieve a variety of symptoms, including pain, muscle spasticity, nausea, and appetite loss. The dangers of smoking marijuana, as well as the effects of its active chemical components on the immune system and on psychological health. The potential use of marijuana-based medications on symptoms of AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, and several other specific disorders, in comparison with existing treatments. Marijuana As Medicine? introduces readers to the active compounds in marijuana. These include the principal ingredient in Marinol, a legal medication. The authors also discuss the prospects for developing other drugs derived from marijuana's active ingredients. In addition to providing an up-to-date review of the science behind the medical marijuana debate, Mack and Joy also answer common questions about the legal status of marijuana, explaining the conflict between state and federal law regarding its medical use. Intended primarily as an aid to patients and caregivers, this book objectively presents critical information so that it can be used to make responsible health care decisions. Marijuana As Medicine? will also be a valuable resource for policymakers, health care providers, patient counselors, medical faculty and studentsâ€"in short, anyone who wants to learn more about this important issue.

This important book fills a need in the developing area of Pain Medicine. It provides physicians with an up-to-date resource that details the current understanding about the basic science underlying the mechanism of action of the various CAM therapies used for pain. It summarizes the clinical evidence both for efficacy and safety, and finishes with practical guidelines about how such treatments could be successfully and safely integrated into a Pain practice.

Chronic pain costs the nation up to $635 billion each year in medical treatment and lost productivity. The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act required the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to enlist the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in examining pain as a public health problem. In this report, the IOM offers a blueprint for action in transforming prevention, care, education, and research, with the goal of providing relief for people with pain in America. To reach the vast multitude of people with various types of pain, the nation must adopt a population-level prevention and management strategy. The IOM recommends that HHS develop a comprehensive plan with specific goals, actions, and timeframes. Better data are needed to help shape efforts, especially on the groups of people currently underdiagnosed and undertreated, and the IOM encourages federal and state agencies and private organizations to accelerate the collection of data on pain incidence, prevalence, and treatments. Because pain varies from patient to patient, healthcare providers should increasingly aim at tailoring pain care to each person's experience, and self-management of pain should be promoted. In addition, because there are major gaps in knowledge about pain across health care and society alike, the IOM recommends that federal agencies and other stakeholders redesign education programs to bridge these gaps. Pain is a major driver for visits to physicians, a major reason for taking medications, a major cause of disability, and a key factor in quality of life and productivity. Given the burden of pain in human lives, dollars, and social consequences, relieving pain should be a national priority.

Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.

Exploring the medical rhetoric surrounding pain medicine, the author chronicles the work of interdisciplinary pain management specialists to found a new science of pain and a new approach to pain medicine grounded in a more comprehensive biospychosocial model. His analysis shows how these materials shape the healthcare community's understanding of what pain medicine is, how the medicine should be practiced and regulated, and how practitioner-patient relationships are best managed.

The brain is the most complex organ in our body. Indeed, it is perhaps the most complex structure we have ever encountered in nature. Both structurally and functionally, there are many peculiarities that differentiate the brain from all other organs. The brain is our connection to the world around us and by governing nervous system and higher function, any disturbance induces severe neurological and psychiatric disorders that can have a devastating effect on quality of life. Our understanding of the physiology and biochemistry of the brain has improved dramatically in the last two decades. In particular, the critical role of cations, including magnesium, has become evident, even if incompletely understood at a mechanistic level. The exact role and regulation of magnesium, in particular, remains elusive, largely because intracellular levels are so difficult to routinely quantify. Nonetheless, the importance of magnesium to normal central nervous system activity is self-evident given the complicated homeostatic mechanisms that maintain the concentration of this cation within strict limits essential for normal physiology and metabolism. There is also considerable accumulating evidence to suggest alterations to some brain functions in both normal and pathological conditions may be linked to alterations in local magnesium concentration. This book, containing chapters written by some of the foremost experts in the field of magnesium research, brings together the latest in experimental and clinical magnesium research as it relates to the central nervous system. It offers a complete and updated view of magnesiums involvement in central nervous system function and in so doing, brings together two main pillars of contemporary neuroscience research, namely providing an explanation for the molecular mechanisms involved in brain function, and emphasizing the connections between the molecular changes and behavior. It is the untiring efforts of those magnesium researchers who have dedicated their lives to unraveling the mysteries of magnesiums role in biological systems that has inspired the collation of this volume of work.

From reviews of Deer, eds., Comprehensive Treatment of Chronic Pain by Medical, Interventional, and Integrative Approaches: "Comprehensive Treatment of Chronic Pain by Medical, Interventional, and Integrative Approaches is a major textbook... [I]t should be a part of all departmental libraries and in the reference collection of pain fellows and pain practitioners. In fact, this text could be to pain as Miller is to general anesthesia." Journal of Neurosurgical Anesthesiology Edited by master clinician-experts appointed by the American Academy of Pain Medicine, this is a soft cover version of the Interventional sections of the acclaimed Deer, eds., Comprehensive Treatment of Chronic Pain by Medical, Interventional, and Integrative Approaches. It is intended as a primary reference for busy clinicians who seek up-to-date and authoritative information about interventional approaches to treating chronic pain. State-of-the-art coverage of full range of techniques: neural blockades, neurolysis blocks, and neurostimulation Review of clinically relevant anatomy and physiology "Key Points" preview contents of each chapter

This comprehensive text is the definitive academic pain medicine resource for medical students, residents and fellows. Acting as both an introduction and continued reference for various levels of training, this guide provides practitioners with up-to-date academic standards. In order to comprehensively meet the need for such a contemporary text—treatment options, types of pain management, and variables affecting specific conditions are thoroughly examined across 48 chapters. Categories of pain conditions include orofacial, neuropathic, visceral, neck, acute, muscle and myofascial, chronic urogenital and pelvic, acute, and regional. Written by renowned experts in the field, each chapter is supplemented with high-quality color figures, tables and images that provide the reader with a fully immersive educational experience. Academic Pain Medicine: A Practical Guide to Rotations, Fellowship, and Beyond is an unprecedented contribution to the literature that addresses the wide-spread requisite for a practical guide to pain medicine within the academic environment.