{"id":113497,"date":"2017-08-23T01:53:52","date_gmt":"2017-08-23T05:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=113497"},"modified":"2017-08-23T01:53:52","modified_gmt":"2017-08-23T05:53:52","slug":"doctors-must-help-remedy-opioid-crisis-in-canada-cma-meeting-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/08\/23\/doctors-must-help-remedy-opioid-crisis-in-canada-cma-meeting-told\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctors must help remedy opioid crisis in Canada, CMA meeting told"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“As a profession, we must accept responsibility for this and help to remedy it,” said Milne, referring to the long history of physicians overprescribing opioids to manage patients with chronic pain. (Photo<\/a>: frankieleon\/ Flickr<\/a>, CC BY 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

QUEBEC — Canada’s opioid epidemic isn’t a single crisis but a complex set of overlapping crises that will take multiple strategies to solve, a panel of experts told the annual meeting of the Canadian Medical Association on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a crisis for Canada and every community is going to have to deal with it,\u201d Dr. David Milne, a Calgary-based anesthetist told about 1,200 delegates attending the CMA meeting in Quebec City.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a profession, we must accept responsibility for this and help to remedy it,\u201d said Milne, referring to the long history of physicians overprescribing opioids to manage patients with chronic pain.<\/p>\n

Dr. David Juurlink, head of clinical pharmacology and toxicology at Sunnybrook\u00a0Health\u00a0Sciences Centre in Toronto, said the medical community was misled in the 1990s by drug makers about the potential harms of opioids, including U.S.-based Purdue Pharma, which claimed its slow-release drug OxyContin posed little danger of addiction, even with long-term use.<\/p>\n

From a prescribing perspective, \u201cwe have to do things differently,\u201d said Juurlink. \u201cWe have an entire generation of docs who’ve just come to view opioids as our go-to drugs for patients with pain,\u201d despite a paucity of scientific evidence supporting their effectiveness and with growing awareness of their potential harms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to prescribe these drugs much less readily for both acute and chronic pain than we have,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n

But it isn’t only pain patients taking the powerful medications that are at risk. Illicit opioids such as fentanyl have been flooding into Canada over the last two years, putting anyone who uses illicit drugs at risk of a fatal overdose.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has never been a more dangerous time to purchase drugs on the street because of the profusion of fentanyl and several dozen (opiate) analogues of various potencies,\u201d Juurlink said.<\/p>\n

In B.C. alone, 967 people died of an opioid-related overdose last year and the province is on track for more than 1,500 such deaths in 2017, said Dr. Christy Sutherland, a family physician who treats patients in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy patients don’t want to die and they live in daily fear of death,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen you use, each time because of the contaminated market of drugs in B.C., you’re worried that you’re going to die.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the ultimate goal may be to help those addicted to opioids to get off the drugs through treatment with the replacement medications methadone or Suboxone, Sutherland said the immediate focus is on preventing people dying of an overdose after unwittingly taking a street drug laced with fentanyl.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo my job is to keep them safe,\u201d said Sutherland, who is involved with several harm-reduction programs, including Vancouver’s supervised-consumption site INSITE.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want drug users to feel welcome whatever program you are creating and then you want to target marginalized populations who are not engaged with the\u00a0health-care system and for whom treatment is not an immediate realistic option,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople die less when you bring them inside and when you attach them to medical care. … That’s the outcome that we should be concerned about as physicians — not what it looks like to the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Milne said all the opioid-related deaths that have occurred represent an \u201cextraordinary loss\u201d on their own, but each one also represents \u201cmany more Canadians that use, misuse and abuse opiates on a regular basis or even an episodic basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we should never lose track of the fact that people involved in this epidemic are our family, our friends and our neighbours,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd they all require the same respect and empathy to deal with this, as it is a significant\u00a0health\u00a0problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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