Page 12 - CASA Bulletin 2019 Vol 6 No 4

CASA Bulletin of Anesthesiology

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A BRIEF PERSONAL SURVEY ON OPIOID CRISIS

Wenhui Cao, MD, PhD
Dept Rehab Med, VA Hospital at Buffalo, NY

By this time, everybody probably has heard of
opioid crisis or opioid epidemic if has not read about it
from somewhere: newspapers, journals, TV, Twitters,
Facebooks....So many people have been affected by it

or by the actions taken in response to it. You may know
someone directly or indirectly, who was hospitalized
or even died from opioid overdose; you may have seen
people in your practice complaining about not being able
to get opioid medications for their pain anymore because
of the concern about overdosing. You may even heard of
the news that some pain clinic got shut down and doctors
were taken away for criminal investigation.... Amid all
this, the news that American Pain Society has filed for
bankruptcy on June 28, 2019 and stopped its usual operation may not be that surprising after all.

Opioid epidemic or Opioid crisis in America was reported to begin in mid 1990 to early
2000. Assessing pain level has been an important part of patient care on every floor of hospital.
Inadequate pain relief was very much criticized and doctors were encouraged to generously
prescribe opioids. Along the way, opioid has become one of the most often prescribed
medication in America. Increased exposure, sometimes early exposure at young age, easy
access, lack of understanding of the nature of opioids, all are contributing factors to opioid
misuse and abuse.

Per statistics, in 2016 alone, over 2 million American had addiction to opioids, illicit or

prescribed. Among the 64,000 who died of all overdose, more than 42,000 were died from
opioid overdose. In Oct. 2017, President Trump declared the opioid crisis as a public health
emergency and signed SUPPORT ACT. Around that time and following months, we have seen
actions and many strategies taken into place aiming at reducing and eliminating addiction and
overdose.

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