Prescription Pain Medications:
Misuse and Abuse of Effective Therapies

Program Description:

Chronic or acute pain can have a serious negative effect on quality of life and can lead to reduced productivity, poor relationships, diminished sleep, low self-esteem, irritability, and depression. Although advances have been made to increase awareness of this widespread national medical problem, pain is often under-treated in the United States. Inadequate and/or inappropriate analgesia is a serious problem across the spectrum of demographic groups. Although opioid analgesics are effective therapeutic agents used to treat pain, defining the role of opioids in pain management remains an ongoing challenge due to the social, legal, and political obstacles that confront clinicians who aggressively treat pain in their clinical practice.

Activity Objectives:

Upon completion of this program, participants will be better able to:

• Review key findings from national drug abuse surveys on the prevalence of teen prescription drug misuse and abuse, and discuss the importance of responsible prescribing and properly safeguarding and discarding prescription pain medications
• Examine the physiologic and psychological effects of prescription pain medications in recreational and non-drug abusing volunteers
• Identify the advantages and disadvantages of the current opioid analgesic therapies used in the treatment of acute and chronic pain
• Discuss the emerging technologies that can lead to improved outcomes in patients with acute or chronic pain

Faculty:

Douglas L. Gourlay, MD, MSc, FRCPC
Anesthesiologist
Wasser Pain Management Centre
Mount Sinai Hospital
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Herbert D. Kleber, MD
Professor of Psychiatry
Columbia University Medical Center
Director, Division on Substance Abuse
New York State Psychiatric Institute
New York, NY

James P. Zacny, PhD
Professor of Anesthesia & Critical Care
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL

Disclosures:

It is the policy of Medical Education Resources to ensure balance, independence, objectivity, and scientific rigor in all its educational activities. All faculty participating in our programs are expected to disclose any relationships they may have with commercial companies whose products or services may be mentioned, so that participants may evaluate the objectivity of the presentations. In addition, any discussion of off-label, experimental, or investigational use of drugs or devices will be disclosed by the faculty.

Douglas L. Gourlay, MD, MSc, FRCPC, is a consultant for Alpharma Inc., Cephalon, Inc., King Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Purdue Pharma L.P., and Schering-Plough Corporation.

Herbert D. Kleber, MD, is on the advisory board for Abbott Laboratories and is on the speakers’ bureau for Ortho-McNeil.

James P. Zacny, PhD, has nothing to disclose.

This program is sponsored by Medical Education Resources, Inc.

This program is supported by an educational grant from Abbott Laboratories.

Instructions:

To obtain credit, a score of 70% or greater is required. This CME is offered at no cost to participants. Please proceed with the activity until you have successfully completed this program, answered all test questions, completed the posttest survey, and have received your digital copy of your credit certificate. Your online certificate will be saved on myCME.com within your Profile/Exam History, which you can then access at any time.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

WINDOWS PC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
266-MHz Pentium II; Windows 98 or higher; 64 MB RAM; 800 x 600 screen resolution set for “High Color (16-Bit)”; Macromedia Flash Player 6 or higher.

MACINTOSH^® SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Power Mac g3 at 300 MHz; System 8.5 or higher (excluding Mac OSX); 96 MB RAM; 20 MB minimum hard disk space available; 800 x 600 screen resolution set to “Thousands of Colors”; Macromedia Flash Player 6 or higher.