Dr. Youngwerth offers some advice.“We often see pseudoaddiction in response to undertreatment and inadequately managed pain,” she says. “If you treat the pain appropriately, these behaviors go away.” She tries to teach this concept to residents and hospital staff, who sometimes find it hard to put themselves in the shoes of patients experiencing severe pain.
“If you have a 68-year-old patient with no history of addiction or substance abuse who is in the hospital [with the] status post-hip replacement and is now clock-watching and routinely pressing the call button before her next dose of opioids is due, staff may feel that she is displaying addictive behaviors,” Dr. Youngwerth says. “Why would they think that this situation evolved into addiction during her brief hospital stay? It’s more likely that she’s just afraid of having pain.”
The solution to pseudoaddiction is to prescribe opioids at pharmacologically appropriate doses and schedules. Then, titrate up until analgesia is achieved or toxicities necessitate alternative approaches. Use all the techniques described in the first article of this series. It is also important to restore trust and the patient’s confidence in the medical system’s ability to manage his or her pain. Opioid pain regimens in the hospital should also be coordinated with plans for post-discharge medications and with the patient’s primary-care physician.
Two other concepts that often come up in discussions of opioid treatments are tolerance, which is a diminution of the drug’s effects over time, resulting in a need to increase doses of the medication to achieve the same analgesic effect, and physical dependence, in which the abrupt discontinuation of an analgesic after a period of continuous use causes physical symptoms of withdrawal from the drug. Both of these issues can be addressed with proper assessment and management, and neither is diagnostic of addiction.
Pain experts say tolerance, though a real phenomenon of opioids, is not often a serious problem with pain management in the hospital. Instead, the need for escalating analgesic doses may reflect changes in the underlying disease process. Tolerance can also include positive benefits such as its emergence for opioid side effects like nausea or sedation. Physical dependence on opioids is predictable but can be managed if the original cause of the pain is resolved and the analgesic is no longer needed. Most opioids can be gradually reduced, with each day’s dose at 75% of the previous day’s dose, until the drug is tapered off.6
What if the Patient Is an Addict?
Although pain experts believe that drug addiction caused by appropriate and adequate prescribing of opioids for analgesia is rare, this does not mean that hospitalists won’t face the problem of patients who are addicted to pain medications. “You are already treating patients with addiction,” said Dr. Crossno in his presentation at the AAHPM meeting in Salt Lake City.
Given that pre-existing addictions are relatively common in American society (estimates range from 5% to 17% of the population, depending on whether alcohol abuse is included), it is reasonable to expect this segment of the population will be represented among acutely ill, hospitalized patients.7 Sometimes, the substance abuse problem of a friend or family member affects the patient’s care, such as when pain medications are stolen from the patient.