CDC’s 2022 pain management guidelines are ‘better,’ but opioids should be ‘last resort’

ORLANDO — The CDC’s updated guidance on prescription opioids in 2022 were a step in the right direction, but nonopioid therapies should take a more “prominent role” in the management of pain, according to a speaker.
J. Mark Bailey, DO, PhD, FACN, a professor of neurology and anesthesiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, explained that the 2016 CDC guidelines for opioid prescriptions were “broad suggestions on how to handle pain” in “an effort to help us out.”
At that time, it was recommended that clinicians avoid or justify increasing

ORLANDO — The CDC’s updated guidance on prescription opioids in 2022 were a step in the right direction, but nonopioid therapies should take a more “prominent role” in the management of pain, according to a speaker.
J. Mark Bailey, DO, PhD, FACN, a professor of neurology and anesthesiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, explained that the 2016 CDC guidelines for opioid prescriptions were “broad suggestions on how to handle pain” in “an effort to help us out.”
At that time, it was recommended that clinicians avoid or justify increasing