America’s Opioid Crisis Has A Grim Silver Lining

[Riddick]

Organ transplants are up 20% since 2012 due to a surge in deadly overdoses. FULL STORY

[Malaria_Kidd II]

What an important medical related news item you've entered here! Thanks Riddick, you've done it again!

South central Indiana's very rural communities have been making the news of increased opioid (heroin) deaths the last couple years. Now it's the same news coming from the larger southern cities and maybe the rural area's drug induced deaths made the big city's news reporters rise up an take notice.

What a grim silver lining that is!

MK II, who's drug free and liking it!

[Riddick]

Over 100 million Americans suffer long-term pain. Now they find themselves at the epicenter of two colliding health catastrophes in the USA: chronic pain and opioid abuse.

Since the 1990s, opioid prescriptions have tripled in the US, which holds less than 5 percent of the world's population but uses more than 80 percent of the world's opioid supply. Efforts to curb opioid prescriptions and abuse are starting to work.

But with the spectacular failure of a drug-centric approach to treating chronic pain, doctors desperately need alternative ways to fight a condition blighting millions of lives. Clinician Ted Jones is trying one, seemingly unlikely technological solution: virtual reality.

Jones has recently completed two small clinical trials which together involved 40 participants receiving between them around 60 sessions of VR. Only one person didn't report reduced pain, he says. Overall, the patients reported that their pain fell by 60–75 percent (compared to baseline) during their VR session, and by 30–50 percent immediately afterwards. The best morphine does is 30 percent.

Compared to other forms of distraction, such as coloring or watching TV, VR "works a whole lot better," Jones says. "It grabs your attention. You just put the helmet on and you are gone." It's early research, but a few other studies of chronic pain have found similar results.

Developing VR into a routine treatment is also going to require new models of funding. So far, Jones has paid for his clinical trials himself. "It's my hobby," he says. "I don't have a boat." Beyond those, he actively discourages his physician colleagues from referring patients for VR, despite the fact that he is convinced it would help, because he can't bill for it. VR pain relief needs a "champion" he says, who will fund trials and convince insurance companies to take it seriously. "The VR industry has got some work to do."

For Jones, there won't ever be one answer to chronic pain. But VR could be another tool. As well as providing a non-pharmacological alternative to treating pain, it might help people who are on opioids to minimize their dose, giving them something active they can do instead of popping extra pills. "With opioids, you just take it, sit and wait." That's why people end up taking more pills than they need — they just want to do something to help their pain."

FULL STORY