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Objective Evidence of Severe Disease: Opioid Use in Chronic Pain
John A. Zweifler
What This Study Found Chronic pain is difficult to treat. Clinicians aim to reduce or eliminate pain, but opioid pain medications are frequently abused, with overdoses and deaths on the rise. In addition, there are no measures of pain to guide prescribing of medications. Until we have measures of pain itself, we should insist on objective evidence of severe disease before prescribing opioids for chronic pain.
