Editorial: Opioids 2019 & Beyond?

摘要

One of the challenging issues for an editor is to come up with an interesting and timely issue. As a consumer of health information, and someone with a vested interest in the pain and palliative care fields, you obviously are aware that the topic of opioid pharmacotherapy continues to dominate news headlines. It seems a day does not go by where there is not a news story that involves opioids or the use of naloxone. To some extent this is not surprising, opioid analgesics have long been considered controversial. In my own career I have seen the pendulum swing with respect to the accepted clinical application of opioid analgesics. In my early pharmacy training in the 1980s opioid analgesics were discussed only in the context of severe acute pain and advanced cancer pain. As I completed my fellowship training in the late 1990s, the pendulum was swinging in favor of the use of opioid analgesics for patients with chronic non-cancer pain. As we enter 2019 it seems as though the pendulum has swung to a point whe e even use in severe acute pain and in palliative care is now in question.