Finding the Right Balance in Opioid Therapy

National Spine & Pain Centers’ Chief Medical Officer Peter Staats, M.D., was recently featured on PainCast: The Pain Management Network, where he gave a lecture on the need for a balanced approach to opioid therapy.

Dr. Staats explained the history of treating pain with opioids, including the benefits and the potential for addiction and abuse. He discussed how American medicine was “pushed” to use opioids to treat pain, and how America is now “pushing back” to reduce the use of these drugs. He also reviewed the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (ASIPP) guidelines for opioid prescription.

Recognized as one of the nation’s preeminent interventional pain management physicians, Dr. Staats founded the division of Pain Medicine in the Department of Anesthesia at Johns Hopkins University, where he served as the director for more than a decade. In 2003, he co-founded Premier Pain Centers of New Jersey which recently joined forces with National Spine & Pain Centers. Dr. Staats has also written nearly 300 articles, book chapters and abstracts on the diagnosis and management of complex pain problems for prominent publications such as JAMA, Lancet, Anesthesiology, Pain Medicine and others.

PainCast is an educational network for pain physicians, offering podcasts, videocasts, articles and discussion forums for pain specialists. For more information, visit PainCast.com.