Acute Pain Management for Patients Receiving Maintenance Methadone Or Buprenorphine Therapy Daniel P
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Annals of Internal Medicine Perspective Acute Pain Management for Patients Receiving Maintenance Methadone or Buprenorphine Therapy Daniel P. Alford, MD, MPH; Peggy Compton, RN, PhD; and Jeffrey H. Samet, MD, MA, MPH More patients with opioid addiction are receiving opioid agonist 4 common misconceptions resulting in suboptimal treatment of therapy (OAT) with methadone and buprenorphine. As a result, acute pain. Clinical recommendations for providing analgesia for physicians will more frequently encounter patients receiving OAT patients with acute pain who are receiving OAT are presented. who develop acutely painful conditions, requiring effective treat- Although challenging, acute pain in patients receiving this type of ment strategies. Undertreatment of acute pain is suboptimal med- therapy can effectively be managed. ical treatment, and patients receiving long-term OAT are at partic- ular risk. This paper acknowledges the complex interplay among Ann Intern Med. 2006;144:127-134. www.annals.org addictive disease, OAT, and acute pain management and describes For author affiliations, see end of text. he treatment of opioid dependence, both on heroin A 29-year-old woman reported severe right arm pain af- Tand prescription narcotics, with opioid agonist therapy ter fracturing her olecranon process. She had a history of in- (OAT) (that is, methadone or buprenorphine) is effective: jection heroin use and received methadone, 90 mg/d, in a It decreases opioid and other drug abuse, increases treat- methadone maintenance program. In the emergency depart- ment retention, decreases criminal activity, improves indi- ment, she seemed uncomfortable and received one 2-mg dose of vidual functioning, and decreases HIV seroconversion (1– intramuscular morphine sulfate over 6 hours. While hospital- 5). Because of the increasing use of these medications for ized, she continued to report severe pain despite receiving her prolonged periods in primary care, a practice called office- daily methadone dose and intramuscular ketorolac. She was based opioid treatment, nonaddiction specialists will be told that her usual methadone dose should help control her treating more of these affected patients in clinical practice, pain. She was labeled as “drug-seeking” because of her con- including those with episodes of acute pain (6–11). stant requests for additional pain medications. Adequate treatment of acute painful conditions is an essential dimension of quality medical care (12–17). Inad- PAIN AND OPIOID DEPENDENCE equate treatment is common among a wide spectrum of The clinical conditions of pain and opioid dependence patients (18–23). Nonopioid analgesics (for example, non- are not unrelated phenomena (30–32). Forty-one years steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and acetaminophen) are ago, Martin and Inglis (33) observed that opioid-addicted recommended for treating acute pain; however, moderate patients abuse opioids to treat “an abnormally low toler- to severe acute pain will often require opioid analgesics ance for painful stimuli.” Opioids, whether administered (24). Physicians may not prescribe effective opioid analge- with analgesic or addictive intent, activate opiate receptors sia across all patient populations because of fears of cogni- in the locus coeruleus and amygdala, which provide both tive, respiratory, and psychomotor side effects; iatrogenic analgesia and reward (34, 35). drug addiction; and prescription drug diversion (25, 26). The presence of one condition seems to influence the This tendency of health care professionals to undermedi- expression of the other. Clinical examples of this include how the presence of acute pain seems to decrease the eu- cate patients with opioid analgesics has been termed opio- phorogenic (pleasurable) qualities of the opioid (36) and phobia (27). Such fears are exaggerated when treating pa- how the presence of addictive disease seems to worsen the tients with a known history of a substance use disorder. experience of pain. With respect to the latter, Savage and The provision of opioid analgesics to a patient with opioid Schofferman (37) found a decade ago that persons with dependence receiving OAT can be particularly challenging addiction and pain have a “syndrome of pain facilitation.” (28, 29). Their pain experience is worsened by subtle withdrawal We highlight the issues associated with the manage- syndromes, intoxication, withdrawal-related sympathetic ment of acute pain in patients receiving OAT and describe nervous system arousal, sleep disturbances, and affective theoretical and empirical findings that suggest unique re- quirements for opioid analgesia for such patients. In addi- tion, we identify common misconceptions of health care providers that underlie inadequate pain management and See also: provide practical recommendations for the analgesic man- Web-Only agement of acute pain in this special clinical population. CME quiz To help illustrate these issues, we present the following Conversion of tables into slides clinical vignette from our experience. © 2006 American College of Physicians 127 Perspective Acute Pain Management for Patients Receiving OAT Table 1. Pain and Addiction Terminology* Term Definition Physical dependence Normal physiologic adaptation defined as the development of withdrawal or abstinence syndrome with abrupt dose reduction or administration of an antagonist Tolerance Normal neurobiological event characterized by the need to increase the dose over time to obtain the original effect Cross-tolerance Normal neurobiological event of tolerance to effects of medication within the same class Substance (opioid) Chronic neurobiological disorder defined as a pattern of maladaptive behaviors, including loss of control over use, craving and dependence (addiction) preoccupation with nontherapeutic use, and continued use despite harm resulting from use with or without physical dependence or tolerance Pseudoaddiction Behavioral changes in patients that seem similar to those in patients with opioid dependence or addiction but are secondary to inadequate pain control Drug-seeking behaviors Directed or concerted efforts on the part of the patient to obtain opioid medication or to ensure an adequate medication supply; may be an appropriate response to inadequately treated pain Therapeutic dependence Patients with adequate pain relief may demonstrate drug-seeking behaviors because they fear not only the reemergence of pain but perhaps also the emergence of withdrawal symptoms Pseudo-opioid resistance Adequate pain relief continue to report persistent severe pain to prevent reduction in current opioid analgesic dose Opioid-induced hyperalgesia A neuroplastic change in pain perception resulting in an increase in pain sensitivity to painful stimuli, thereby decreasing the analgesic effects of opioids * Adapted from references 40–44. changes, all consequences of addictive disease (37). Sup- treatment. Not only do the analgesic and addiction treat- porting a negative effect of addiction on pain tolerance, ment profiles of these opioids differ, but the neuroplastic patients who abuse stimulants and those who abuse opioids changes associated with long-term opioid exposure (that is, have been shown to be less tolerant of pain than their peers tolerance and hyperalgesia) may effectively diminish their in remission (38, 39). analgesic effectiveness (45). The clinical approach is complicated by the confusing and often misunderstood terminology used in pain man- Analgesic Properties of Maintenance Opioids agement and addiction medicine (40–43). As detailed in Patients receiving maintenance therapy with opioids Table 1, physical dependence and tolerance are typical and for addiction treatment do not derive sustained analgesia predictable physiologic consequences of opioid exposure. from it. Methadone and buprenorphine, potent analgesics, These terms in and of themselves do not indicate maladap- have a duration of action for analgesia (4 to 8 hours) that is tive behaviors and do not meet the diagnostic criteria of substantially shorter than their suppression of opioid with- substance dependence (41) outlined in the Diagnostic and drawal (24 to 48 hours) (46–50). Because most patients Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, text receiving OAT are given a dose every 24 to 48 hours, the revision, without, for example, loss of control or continued period of even partial pain relief with these medications is use despite harm. Drug-seeking is another commonly ill- small. defined term that may indicate the presence of addiction but, as will be described, can also reflect pain relief–seeking because of unrelieved pain or anxiety about pain manage- Opioid Tolerance ment (44). Tolerance is one factor that explains why these pa- tients derive little pain relief from maintenance opioids. Tolerance, the need for increasing doses of a medication to COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS achieve its initial effects, develops with continuous opioid Four common misconceptions of health providers re- use but differentially affects specific opioid properties. For sult in the undertreatment of acute pain in patients receiv- example, tolerance readily develops to the respiratory and ing OAT: 1) The maintenance opioid agonist (methadone CNS depressive effects of opioids but not to their consti- or buprenorphine) provides analgesia; 2) use of opioids for pating effects (51, 52). Analgesic tolerance develops for analgesia may result in addiction relapse; 3) the additive different medications within the opioid class, a phenome- effects