Nondrug therapies that might have been dismissed 30 years ago are now the sorts of treatments physicians are turning to instead of overused treatments like surgical procedures, opioids, and injections, said Daniel Clauw, MD, professor of anesthesiology, medicine (rheumatology), and psychiatry; director of translational research; and director of the Center for Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research.
Nondrug therapies that might have been dismissed 30 years ago are now the sorts of treatments physicians are turning to instead of overused treatments like surgical procedures, opioids, and injections, said Daniel Clauw, MD, professor of anesthesiology, medicine (rheumatology), and psychiatry; director of translational research; and director of the Center for Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research.
Transcript
How has pain management for patients with fibromyalgia evolved? Are opioids still beneficial for these patients, since they experience chronic pain, or are we starting to find alternatives so we can taper these patients off opioids?
So, in the last 20 years or so I think physicians have understood that fibromyalgia is a real disease, the approval of 3 different drugs by the FDA helped a lot because those companies had education programs that went along with their drug approvals, but over that period of time I think there has been a gradual acceptance that there is a number of drug therapies that can be helpful in fibromyalgia.
But we also have seen more and more literature suggesting that nondrug therapies—we’ve known forever that cognitive behavioral therapy and exercise were helpful treatments for fibromyalgia, but it’s really been in the last 5 to 10 years that it’s become clear that a much broader set of nondrug therapies are helpful, not just in fibromyalgia but in any chronic pain condition: things like mindfulness, yoga, tai chi, biofeedback chiropractic manipulation, acupuncture, acupressure. These are things that when I was trained 30 or so years ago, we were fairly dismissive of in the US healthcare systems that these things were not effective.
And now 30 years later the pendulum has swung away from the surgical procedures, the opioids, the injections that we overuse in the United States and we’re starting to more and more embrace the use of these nondrug therapies.
Frameworks for Advancing Health Equity: Urban Health Outreach
May 9th 2024In the series debut episode of "Frameworks for Advancing Health Equity," Mary Sligh, CRNP, and Chelsea Chappars, of Allegheny Health Network, explain how the Urban Health Outreach program aims to improve health equity for individuals experiencing homelessness.
Listen
CMS Medicare Final Rule: Advancing Benefits, Competition, and Consumer Protection
May 7th 2024On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we're talking with Karen Iapoce, senior director of government products and programs at ZeOmega, about the recent CMS final rule on Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage.
Listen
Study Highlights Significant Increases in Utilization, Spending on DMD Drugs in Medicaid
May 17th 2024The findings add to recent research on the growing utilization, expenditure, and prices of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) therapies in the current landscape, an area health care policy could potentially address.
Read More