Tag Archives: #JAMANetworkOpen

Yale Study Evaluates Long-Term Use of Muscle Relaxant Medications for Chronic Pain

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Benjamin Oldfield, MD MHS
Vice President of Clinical Affairs
Program in Addiction Medicine
Department of Medicine
Yale School of Medicine
New Fair Haven Community Health Care
New Haven, Connecticut

PainRelief.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Response: Stricter opioid prescribing guidelines have been associated with more prescriptions of other (non-opioid) classes of medicines for pain, and particularly for chronic pain. Muscle relaxant medications (a class of medications that includes, for example, cyclobenzaprine, tizanidine, and others) have gotten very popular in the last several years.

By some measures, prescriptions for this class of medicines doubled between 2005 and 2016, and physician visits for continuing muscle relaxant medications tripled during the same period. However, this class of medications is generally indicated for acute pain, in short courses (not for chronic pain, in longer courses). So, we set out to analyze all the literature to ask—what is the safety and efficacy of this class of medications for chronic pain, in longer courses (1 month or more)?

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Less-is-More Approach to Pain Relief After Surgery

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PainRelief.com Interview with:
Dr Deanne Jenkin PhD
UNSW Australia,
now Research Fellow at The Daffodil Centre
Sydney, Australia

Dr Jenkin

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings?

Response: At the time, long-term opioid use for chronic non-cancer pain was increasing and there were signs that their benefit was overestimated whilst the harms were underestimated. Our randomized trial found that after going home from fracture surgery, strong opioids were not better for pain relief compared to a milder, potentially safer opioid alternative.

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