Chronic Pain Medications: Current Trends for Life Care Planners

Chronic pain cannot be treated the same as acute pain. Many treatments that are perfectly appropriate for acute pain do not help chronic pain and may make it worse. Once pain becomes chronic, most patients require daily medication, and rational polypharmacy is the treatment approach of choice. No cure currently exists for chronic pain and the treatment focus includes lifestyle and behavioral management. This article summarizes the most useful drugs for chronic pain patients, and their common uses in a pain clinic. Most pain treatment is done “off-label,” that is, without a specific approval from the Federal Drug Administration, so treatments common in a pain clinic may not appear in research literature. The goals of chronic pain management are to increase function and daily activity, and by doing so, help patients gain better pain control. Even those patients who do not gain lower pain levels gain better quality of life through increased activity. Medication regimens that support pain management goals are better than medications whose actions inhibit functional improvement.