There isn’t a simple answer to that question, but here are five reasons too many Americans aren’t getting the relief they need.
you’ve probably heard the stat: Some 76 mil- lion Americans are dealing with persistent pain, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s a shocking number by any measure. “There is an inordinate number of people out there with chronic pain,” agrees Scott Fishman, M.D., chief of pain medicine at the University of California at Davis. But here’s the truly unbelievable part: A lot of them are suffering needlessly. Hard numbers aren’t
easy to come by, but two surveys, one done in 1998 and one in 2004, indicated that at least 30 percent of those with moderate pain and more than half of people with severe pain, don’t get ad- equate relief. Research shows, too, that 50 percent to 75 percent of cancer patients who die do so in moderate to severe pain, despite the availability of treatments to alleviate most of their discomfort. But even those numbers can’t really give a true picture since there’s little very recent or current research looking at the size of the problem of undertreated or untreated pain. “We have an under- treatment problem, if not a crisis,” says Fishman. So the next question has to be why? Americans enjoy one of the most advanced (if flawed) healthcare systems in the world and,
STORY BY JACQUELINE STENSON 44 PAIN RESOURCE FALL 2012