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Daily methadone for pain

NZPA-Reuter Boston Daily use of methadone can be helpful to patients with painful, long-term illness, two physicians have reported in the “New England Journal of Medicine.’ 7

Dr Marie Nyswander and Dr Vincent Dole, of Rockefeller University Hospital, said they had been using methadone because patients with severe, long-term pain could develop a tolerance to powerful painkillers such a morphine. Patients on morphine might need increasingly larger doses, they said, which could lead to toxic side effects, physical dependence, and a heightened sensitivity to pain when the effects of the morphine faded.

Dr Nyswander and Dr Dole said that by using daily doses of methadone, a drug often used as a substitute in treating heroin addiction, they could save the morphine for times when the pain became unusually severe. Patients also did not develope a tolerance to methadone.

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19840306.2.114

Bibliographic details

Press, 6 March 1984, Page 23

Word Count
142

Daily methadone for pain Press, 6 March 1984, Page 23

Daily methadone for pain Press, 6 March 1984, Page 23