BACK & NECK DEGEN. DISKS, etc.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Given that the primary cause of overdose death in the USA is related to prescribed opioids, one potential strategy to improve awareness and decrease morbidity and/or mortality could include improved labeling. Specific patient populations which significantly struggle with adverse outcomes related to opioid abuse are seen in palliative care, chronic pain, and acute pain treatment settings. RECENT FINDINGS: An unexplored option for improving the healthcare quality and safety for patients currently prescribed opioids would be to require pharmaceutical companies to provide a morphine milligram equivalent (MME) on opioid packaging...

Low back pain (LBP) is a leading cause of disability worldwide. In the absence of a classification system for pain syndromes, classification of LBP on the basis of the distribution of pain as axial (pain generally localized to the low back) or radicular neuropathic (pain radiating to the lower extremities) is relevant to clinical practice because the distribution of pain is often a corollary of frequently occurring disease processes involving the lumbar spine. Common sources of axial LBP include the intervertebral disc, facet joint, sacroiliac joint, and paraspinal musculature, whereas common sources of radicular pain include a herniated intervertebral disc and spinal stenosis...