By Roger Chriss, PNN Columnist

The new book "Prescription Drug Diversion and Pain" is a textbook treatment of pain management and drug policy amid the opioid crisis. Written and edited by experts, the book is a scholarly, rigorous and evenhanded examination of the benefits and burdens of opioid pain medication.

Each chapter is written by specialists who address a particular aspect of the opioid crisis, with extensive footnotes justifying every statistic and claim. Much of that data, however, is admittedly flawed.

“As we show in this book, essential data about opioid abuse, morbidity, and mortality are lacking and what little data we have are derived from flawed and obsolete government databases,” the authors note in the preface.

“Yet, these resources are relied upon for public policy development, resource allocation, and lawmaking. In the absence of sound data, ingrained cultural feelings about addiction can become a powerful driver of attitudes, even among pain specialists who, despite their professional training and experience, may be influenced by such bias in their prescribing practices.”

The first chapters look at the history, regulation and monitoring of opioid prescriptions, and attempts to defuse the bias often associated with them:

"These medications are neither good nor bad absent context, despite the public tendency to oversimplify their use and mischaracterize their utility."

The origins of the opioid crisis are given due consideration. Rising rates of opioid prescribing are recognized as one factor, but drug diversion in the supply chain is also acknowledged:

“There is evidence that thefts from hospital and pharmacy drug supplies, as well as in-transit thefts from manufacturers and distributors, may also be a significant source of diverted opioids.”

Close attention is given to the issue of overprescribing and doctors who are “careless, corrupt, and compromised by impairment.”

But the book is also critical of the theory – expounded by the CDC opioid guideline – that reducing the number of prescriptions will help solve the opioid crisis:

“One might expect… that a decline in sales would produce a corresponding decline in overdose deaths. This has not occurred, casting doubt on the CDC’s original hypothesis. Several explanations are possible for this and may involve the recent increase in the use of street opioids like heroin and fentanyl analogs.

“Government databases for tracking nonmedical drug use and related health consequences are obsolete and lack the sensitivity to show which drugs, by chemical name and product formulation, licit or illicit, are responsible for the increasing overdose deaths.”

Later chapters explore opioid prescribing in detail and echo many of the themes of the CDC guideline:

“Not every patient who complains of pain needs an opioid or is a candidate for opioid therapy. Opioids should be prescribed only when the benefit outweighs the risks. Functional improvement should be a primary goal, along with improved sleep and mood, regardless of the therapy used.”

Indeed, the book goes to great lengths to discuss the risks associated with long-term opioid therapy, not just addiction but endocrinopathy, sedation, delirium, and bone loss. Many alternatives, from non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and tricyclic antidepressants to cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) are also described in detail.

The book laments the loss of interdisciplinary pain management programs, starting in the 1980s. These programs provided “a safer and clinically more effective alternative to opioids [and] have also been empirically associated with reducing patients’ reliance on opioids.” But the programs were costly to insurers and not profitable for medical facilities. Their disappearance “should be considered a contributory factor in the crisis of diversion and abuse and the associated destruction of lives.”

The book challenges areas of pain management and prescribing practice. A whole chapter is given over to the subject of urine drug testing, which is described as “an important element of an overall opioid-compliance program.” Because misuse of prescription drugs and use of illicit drugs is not uncommon among chronic pain patients, such monitoring is recommended. But the book cautions: “Other clinical indicators are needed before determining if a patient is nonadherent.”

The book concludes with its key idea, that there are no easy solutions:

"Given the complexity of the practice of pain management, the ‘opioid crisis’ cannot be solved, nor can conditions for pain patients be improved, using only simple and direct approaches: one medication, one regulatory policy, one law, or one injection will not be the answer for our chronic pain patients.

The government’s crackdown on drug companies and others in the pharmaceutical industry has had a negligible effect on reducing the morbidity and mortality resulting from the abuse of opioids.”

In other words, the opioid crisis and pain management are sufficiently complex that simple approaches are bound to fail. We need smart approaches. This book does an excellent job outlining the current state of knowledge to inform such approaches.

Roger Chriss lives with Ehlers Danlos syndrome and is a proud member of the Ehlers-Danlos Society. Roger is a technical consultant in Washington state, where he specializes in mathematics and research.

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.