Editorial Comment

"Be careful what you ask for." In our discipline's quest for comprehensive guidelines for the management of opioid medications, these have been provided by the CDC in the past week, and are linked below. Depending on formatting, the reader will see over 50 pages, the greater part of which is, appropriately, discussion of the evidence for and against opioid use practices; “appropriately,” given the contentions associated with this topic. Naturally, that sort of reading assignment encourages condensation.

First, from the Guideline, itself:  “This guideline provides recommendations for the prescribing of opioid pain medication by primary care clinicians for chronic pain (i.e., pain conditions that typically last >3 months or past the time of normal tissue healing) in outpatient settings outside of active cancer treatment, palliative care, and end-of-life care.”

Second, readers will find a highly readable distillation of the guidelines in the JAMA article by Dr. Yngvild Olsen, also linked.  All of two pages plus references, it provides the needed framework within which to navigate the larger CDC document.  

There is presently an initiative from the ONDCP to encourage inclusion of these guidelines within cooperating medical schools’ curricula, an initiative in which my own and many others’ schools will likely join.  The editors of ASAMW look forward to our readership’s comments. – W. Haning