By Pat Anson, Editor

Next month will mark the one year anniversary of opioid guidelines released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – guidelines that discourage primary care physicians from prescribing opioids for chronic non-cancer pain.

At the time of their release, the CDC estimated that as many as 11.5 million Americans were using opioid medication daily for pain relief. Many of those patients now say their doses have been abruptly lowered or they are unable to obtain opioids at all.

That could be a good thing, depending on your point of view about the nation’s so-called “opioid epidemic.” Former CDC director Thomas Frieden, MD, has called the guidelines an “excellent starting point” to stop an epidemic fueled by “decades of prescribing too many opioids for too many conditions where they provide minimal benefit.”

Many pain patients disagree, saying they’ve used opioids safely and effectively for years. They say the guidelines have had a chilling effect on many of their doctors and are being implemented in ways that go far beyond what the CDC intended.  

“Last year, when the CDC ‘recommendations’ came out, the entire building of the only doctor's office I can go to decided they were rules, and cut me from 210 mg/day morphine to 90 mg. Now they say they can only give me 60 mg/day,” wrote Eli, one of hundreds of patients we’ve heard from in the past year.

“I'm in so much pain I can't properly care for myself, nor get to town for supplies when I need them. I've become increasingly more disabled and dependent on others.”

“My pain management doctor told me that the CDC required that all morphine be taken away from all Americans,” wrote a California woman who suffers from severe back pain. “He even stated that surgeons were sending home their post-surgery patients with Motrin, nothing else.

“What are you people in the CDC doing? Don't you realize how paranoid doctors can get? You may think using the term ‘guideline’ will help them understand what you are trying to do, but you have created a bunch of neurotic paranoids. Stop it. Do something before you kill all of us.”

“I am a 76 year old intelligent woman who is not an addict or an abuser, yet I am denied relief from unremitting pain even after 20 years of trying every drug and treatment modality available,” wrote Roberta Glick. “I am at a total loss as to what to do, how to fight, etc.  My physician is a strong supporter.  He is not the problem. He also is a victim of misguided CDC attempts to curb drug addiction.”

Are the CDC guidelines voluntary or mandatory? Have they improved the quality of pain care? Are patients being treated with safer and better alternatives? Most importantly, are soaring rates of opioid abuse and addiction finally being brought under control?

Those are some of the questions Pain News Network and the International Pain Foundation (iPain) are asking in an online survey of patients, doctors and other healthcare providers.

“I strongly believe that as these guidelines are implemented by doctors and hospitals around the country there are important lessons to learn from those who are affected by them,” says Barby Ingle, president of iPain and a PNN columnist.

“I hope that pain patients and providers participate in this survey so that we can begin to show how deep the impact actually is to the chronic pain community one year later.” 

The online survey consists of less than a dozen multiple choice questions, which should take only a few minutes to complete. Please take time out of your busy day and complete the survey by clicking here.

The survey findings will be released on March 15th, the first anniversary of the CDC guidelines. By taking the survey, you can also sign up to have the results emailed to you.