BACKGROUND In abdominal wall reconstruction, adequate pain control and minimization of narcotic consumption are essential to improving patient outcomes and satisfaction. Previous studies have examined the role of individual strategies, such as neuraxial analgesia and multimodal analgesia. However, there has not been a study that examined all potential determinants of postoperative narcotic requ...

Introduction In the past 2 decades, opioids have been used increasingly for the treatment of persistent pain, and doses have tended to creep up. As basic science elucidates mechanisms of pain and analgesia, the cross talk between central pain and opioid actions becomes clearer. Objectives We aimed to examine the published literature on basic science explaining pronociceptive opioid actions, a...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Prolonged use of opioids is a possibility for chronic pain treatment. Opioids are effective for virtually all chronic noncancer pain syndromes, but may cause dependence. The aim of this paper is to review the use and rotation of opioids in chronic non-oncologic pain. CONTENT The use of potent opioids is controversial and not recommended as first-line drugs due to the...

Opioids are potent drugs that are widely used to control wound or cancer pain. Increasing evidence suggest that opioids mediate clinically relevant effects that go beyond their classical role as analgesics. Of note, opioids appear to modulate angiogenesis - a process that is critical in wound healing and cancer progression. In this review, we focus on pro- and anti-angiogenic facets of opioids ...

Opioids have been used for decades and continue to be used to treat severe, acute, chronic non-cancer and cancer pain.1,2 They work mainly by inhibiting spinal cord neuronal transduction and the ascending pain signals at midbrain nuclei, and through the modulation of limbic system pain perception.3 The main opioids receptors are mu and kappa receptors.1–3 The use of opioids can be challenging a...

PURPOSE There has been an increase in the abuse of prescription opioids, especially in younger individuals. The current study explores the association between alcohol, cigarette, and/or marijuana use during adolescence and subsequent abuse of prescription opioids during young adulthood. METHODS We used demographic/clinical data from community-dwelling individuals in the 2006-2008 National Sur...