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Letters-Kitaeff

by | Jun 1, 2011

Post Categories: Integrative Medicine | Pain Management

Pain Doctors and Opiates

The publisher pointed out that “State medical boards are now focused on reining in the problem of overprescribing opiates.” In fact, the Washington Department of Health has a Pain Management Statement for pain physicians that states, in the very first sentence, “You must first consider other options before prescribing opiate medication.” This raises the question of how well educated such physicians are in the effective alternatives. In his text, Basics of Acupuncture, Bruce Pomeranz, MD, PhD, major researcher on endorphins, concludes, based on a meta-analysis of the accumulated clinical research studies, that acupuncture is very effective in treating chronic pain, helping from 55% to 85% of patients, compared with placebo (30%–35%) and morphine, which helps in 70% of cases.

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Richard Kitaeff, MA, NMD, LAc

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