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What share of the guild do the medical providers that prescribed the opioids to their patients have? There would be no opioid crisis if none were willing to do
by esd_g0d 2y ago
What share of the guild do the medical providers that prescribed the opioids to their patients have? There would be no opioid crisis if none were willing to do it.
- legitster 2y agoScott Alexander had a very interesting writeup about his experiences: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/16/against-against-pseudoaddiction/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/16/against-against-pseudo...
- nickff 2y agoI just read it (because of your link), and commend it to other people in this thread; quite a well-described and interesting position.
- esd_g0d 2y agoThe US is the only place in the world AFAIK where you will get prescribed opioids for something as trivial as a wisdom tooth extraction (kind of like one of the cases cited). It is also the only place in the world AFAIK going through the opioid epidemic. Every other country in the world has got the problem of painkillers figured out. So it can't be that complicated.
- loeg 2y agoWisdom teeth extraction is far from trivial and opioids are a very reasonable prescription for pain from that surgery.
- esd_g0d 2y agoLiterally does not happen in two countries that I know of, and I bet in many countries of the world (developed ones even).
- saint_fiasco 2y agoObjectively, opioids are prescribed much less often outside the US. Subjectively, I got four wisdom teeth extracted in two sessions of two extractions each. Both times I only needed generic acetaminophen to manage the pain. Perhaps an US surgeon have insisted on doing it all in one session, in which case I would have found the pain and discomfort intolerable and opioids would have made more sense. In any case, they should probably figure out why their patients are in more pain than the patients of foreign surgeons and fix that. It could be something silly like them being less gentle during surgery because they are used to their patients being on opioids.
- legitster 2y agoWisdom teeth was actually one of the safer use cases. You would only get a short run so it was hard to build dependance. The opioid crisis was really defined by people with chronic long-term pain being given it for years at a time.
- esd_g0d 2y agoThe point is that people are overall too cavalier about opioids in the US. I don't think it's necessary to get into the details of how much pain is enough pain, how acute is acute enough, etc... because this is not a problem essentially anywhere else in the world -- and not because they thought really hard about it.