Task Force Calls for Update of Canada’s Opioid Guideline

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

A task force created by Health Canada to study the needs of nearly 8 million Canadians with chronic pain has released its third and final report, saying there is an urgent need for the federal government to address untreated pain and improve access to pain care.

"It is a critical time for action to address unmanaged pain across Canada. Chronic pain is largely invisible and for too long people with pain have faced stigma and had to navigate significant gaps in access to care,” said Fiona Campbell, MD, Co-Chair of the Canadian Pain Task Force.

The task force report – “An Action Plan for Pain in Canada” – calls for more pain research, improved training for pain care providers, and better coordination of government pain policies.

Notably, it also calls for an expansion of Canada’s 2017 opioid prescribing guideline, even while acknowledging the problems the guideline has caused by making access to opioid medication more difficult.   

“Efforts to address opioid-related harms have led to serious and unintended consequences for some people living with chronic pain, including unmanaged pain, increased stigma, reduced access to care for people who use opioids for pain relief, and preventable deaths,” the task force reported. “Despite widespread decreased opioid prescribing, and investments in a continuum of harm reduction, treatment, and prevention initiatives, there are record high numbers of overdose deaths in Canada.”

The report said the guideline should be updated “to better balance the risks of opioids with the risks of opioid discontinuation.” Additional guidance was also needed for treating short-term acute pain, alternatives to opioids, interpreting dose limits, and “best practices in deprescribing.”

The Canadian guideline was modeled after the CDC’s 2016 opioid guideline, which is being updated for many of the same “unintended consequences.” Opioid prescribing in the U.S. is at 20-year lows, while overdose deaths are at record highs.

‘Rearranging the Deck Chairs’

Some critics were unimpressed with the task force report, saying it equates opioids with addiction and doesn’t address how to improve access to opioid pain relievers.

“Health Canada’s Pain Task Force has finally finished rearranging the deck chairs on a ship that sank a decade ago,” Barry Ulmer, Executive Director of the Chronic Pain Association of Canada, said in a statement. “More and more Canadians suffer serious ongoing pain and, since 2011, fewer and fewer opiates — still the only proven remedy for serious acute and chronic pain — are prescribed to treat it.

“Unsurprisingly, a record rise in overdose deaths among those suffering from addictions who can’t find safe supply is tracking the crackdown and the rise of untreated pain, along with suicides among abandoned patients.” 

The task force said there was an “an emerging consensus” on how to improve pain care in Canada, and that it was up to Health Canada and the federal government to fund and combat a public health emergency.    

"People living with pain deserve relief from their pain, reassurance that they matter, and access to services required to improve their quality of life. We will continue to work with people with lived and living experience, as well as our partners and stakeholders, to explore new approaches and determine our next steps,” said Minister of Health Patty Hajdu.

Hajdu also announced that a $2.8 million grant was being given to the Toronto-based Centre of Effective Practice to provide treatment to patients living with addiction, mental illness and chronic pain. The funding comes from a Health Canada substance abuse program.

Patient Advocates Critical of Canadian Pain Task Force Report

By Pat Anson, PNN Editor

A new report from the Canadian Pain Task Force is being called “political propaganda” and “shameful” by patient advocates.

The 75-page report was released last week by the task force, an advisory panel created by Health Canada in 2018 to help it address the needs of nearly 8 million Canadians who live with chronic pain. Like many of their counterparts in the United States, Canadian pain patients often have trouble getting access to opioid medication because of fears the drugs will lead to misuse and addiction.

The task force said it released its second report “with a sense of urgency” because the COVID-19 pandemic had reduced access to healthcare and social services for many people. The report calls chronic pain a “legitimate disease” and said better efforts were needed to provide access to pain treatment, improve public awareness and reduce stigma associated with chronic pain.

“Recent dramatic increases in opioid-related overdose deaths in North America have heightened awareness around the risks associated with both short- and long-term opioid use for chronic pain. However, efforts undertaken to respond to the overdose crisis have led to challenging unintended consequences for people living with chronic pain,” the report found.

“Some people in Canada have been unable to access opioid medications, and others who previously relied on opioids to manage their pain have been unable to continue their medications, or have had significant adjustments to lower their prescriptions, sometimes against their will.”

The task force also released findings from surveys and interviews with nearly 2,000 Canadians – both patients and providers -- who often had “differing expectations” about how chronic pain should be treated. Patients complained of limited access to specialists, long wait times, and treatments that didn’t work or were harmful.

“Many people living with chronic pain have experienced trauma in the context of medical care. They may have had invasive investigations and procedures or negative interactions with health professionals. Such experiences can be damaging on their own, but when compounded with previous trauma can lead to more drastic challenges such as changes in sense of self, view of the world, and nervous system dysregulation, which may all contribute to increased pain and difficulties coping,” the report found.

‘Nothing New’

But outside of announcing $3.5 million in funding for three local health projects, no immediate steps were announced by Health Canada or its task force to improve pain care for Canadians. The panel is not expected to release its third and final report until December 2021.

“There is nothing new in this report,” said Barry Ulmer, Executive Director of the Chronic Pain Association of Canada, a patient advocacy group. “Have they forgotten this is a 3-year study, which will not be completed until 2021? In the meantime, while they fiddle, Canadians continue to suffer and die when the solutions are already there, yet we continue to spend over $3 million taxpayer dollars. So where is the sense of urgency?”

The task force outlined its “next steps” with a vaguely worded statement that “leadership and resources are needed to amplify, spread, and accelerate current activities, coordinate responses, address current gaps and inequities, and reduce the variability across jurisdictions.”    

“This is simply a carefully constructed document to create the appearance of having listened to patient input, and to suppress the substance of changes demanded by both patients and doctors. It is political propaganda of the worst sort,” said Richard Lawhern, PhD, a patient advocate and co-founder of the Alliance for the Treatment of Intractable Pain (ATIP).

“Contrary to the biased declarations of this report, there is no evidence that increased availability of prescription opioids in medical treatment has been a significant factor in causing the public health crisis.”

“Nothing illustrates the folly of government policies better that the rising number of pain sufferers who turn to street heroin because they can no longer get legal medication.”

— Chronic Pain Association of Canada

Ulmer was frustrated that the report didn’t more broadly address how efforts to prevent addiction and overdoses have harmed pain patients.

“The fact that addiction and overdose deaths continue to soar should convince them they have taken the wrong path. But it hasn’t. Now they have pain patients deprived of their medications, with reduced quality of life, increased pain, patients committing suicide, as they are no longer able to cope, with some seeking street drug dealers to see if they can find some relief,” Ulmer said.

“Nothing illustrates the folly of government policies better that the rising number of pain sufferers who turn to street heroin because they can no longer get legal medication.”
  
Ulmer said the report’s brief discussion of opioid medication was “illogical, gutless, and shameful” and called on the Canadian government to “cease their war on pain patients” by immediately withdrawing Canada’s opioid guideline – without waiting for a final report from the task force.