• Question: to some surgery why is it necessary to give people drugs to help that pain but they could get addicted to it

    Asked by item42day to Sudhin, Katie, Frances, Diarmuid on 13 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Frances Shiely

      Frances Shiely answered on 13 Nov 2019:

      Helping pain after surgery should be short term and when you use pain medication short term, you don’t get addicted. The addictive medications are the best for pain and as surgery is so traumatic on the body, these particular drugs are used. it is only if they are used long-term that addition occurs. Up until 10 years ago, there was no evidence about the addictive properties of these medications. Now, there is more evidence so doctors are more cautious about prescribig them. for example, we used to be able to buy solpadeine over the counter in a pharmacy. now you need a prescription. This has happened because we have new evidence to say that these medications can be addictive.

    • Photo: Katie Fala

      Katie Fala answered on 21 Nov 2019:

      Surgery is so traumatic on the body, it would cause a lot of suffering and probably hinder the recovery process to make someone go through it without adequate pain relief. Evidence-based medicine means that as people are treated, we gather data on their outcomes and then use that information to change guidelines and best-practice, so if a particular pain-relief drug was found to be associated with long term addiction it would likely stop being recommended as a first option, only perhaps a back up drug if there were no suitable alternatives.

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