Pain Category Archives — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

September 1, 2019

Big Pharma flinches in opioids suits: a J&J loss in Okla. and a Sackler bid

Big Pharma has hit at least two pain points of potential significance as government officials and trial lawyers work to hold drug makers accountable for at least some of the carnage caused by prescription painkillers.

There’s still a far way to go before companies see a full legal reckoning in the civil justice system for opioid overdose deaths that have killed an estimated 400,000 Americans since 2007, as well the drugs causing tens of thousands of cases of suffering and addiction.

But Oklahoma officials have struck hard at pharmaceutical interests by winning a $572-million nuisance ruling from a state judge against Johnson and Johnson, a legendary and once-respected health care brand.

August 21, 2019

Glimmers of hope in new therapies to battle killer Ebola and lethal TB strain

by Patrick A. Malone

Rare good news on destructive infections is emerging from Africa: Medical scientists, Good Samaritans, and public health officials are hailing the successes of powerful new therapies in treating a deadly and extremely drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis and Ebola, a killer viral hemorrhagic fever that spreads like wildfire.

Americans may skip over dispatches about these “foreign” news developments. They would be wise not to do so, because they have heightened importance these days, domestically, including in providing key lessons to be learned about how to safeguard the public health.

The TB care that is winning great attention overseas requires patients to take three drugs in a regimen in which they take five pills a day for six months. That already is a boon compared with other, now common therapies in which they might need 40 pills a day for as long as two years, or daily antibiotics shots with bad side effects like deafness, kidney failure, and psychosis.

August 20, 2019

As NFL talks up lesser head harms, study shows repeated slams injure brains

by Patrick A. Malone

Although commentators and pro football itself have argued that rule changes by the National Football League have notably reduced possible head harms, new evidence from college athletes shows that even knocks that aren’t severe enough to be deemed concussions may injure young brains.

Those findings come from a University of Rochester study based on brain scans and helmet data from members of the school’s Division III football team (shown above), the New York Times reported.

Researchers scanned the athletes’ mid-brain area twice, once before the season kicked off and at its end. They did so because that region would most likely show the effects of impacts, including those that might be tougher to gauge in other areas of the brain. They also compiled data from special equipment on players’ helmets, registering the number and intensity of every impact — not just from player collisions but also when athletes hit the ground.

July 23, 2019

As overdose deaths dip, new outrages disclosed on Big Pharma and opioids

by Patrick A. Malone

The nation may be hitting an inflection point in the opioid crisis. But Big Pharma, regulators, and politicians have much to answer for prescription painkillers’ terrible toll and their sluggish efforts to reduce the tens of thousands of casualties.

The spare good news about U.S. drug abuse — the first drop in overdose deaths since 1990 — came from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency also warned its findings were freighted with many “yes, but …” elements, including:

The reported 5% decline occurred in deaths from prescription opioids;

July 22, 2019

Rising antibiotic resistance elevates all-too-common UTIs as health concern

by Patrick A. Malone

For kids, women, and seniors, the three letters U, T, and I long described an uncomfortable, inconvenient, and embarrassing condition. The time, though, may have past for the swift and easy relief that diagnoses of urinary tract infections once might have brought. Instead, doctors are expressing concern that the bugs that cause all-too-common UTIs are becoming different and antibiotic resistant.

As the New York Times reported, the shifts already are meaning “more hospitalizations, graver illnesses and prolonged discomfort from the excruciating burning sensation that the infection brings.” The newspaper added:

“The New York City Department of Health has become so concerned about drug-resistant UTIs … that it introduced a new mobile phone app this month that gives doctors and nurses access to a list of strains of urinary tract infections and which drugs they are resistant to. The department’s research found that a third of uncomplicated urinary tract infections caused by E. coli — the most common type now — were resistant to Bactrim, one of the most widely used drugs, and at least one fifth of them were resistant to five other common treatments.”

June 26, 2019

Concerns rise over costly emergency intervention — a ‘bridge to nowhere?’

by Patrick A. Malone

Medical ethicists and patient advocates are raising concerns about a big, costly, and often unsuccessful procedure that “pumps blood out of the body, oxygenates it, and returns it to the body, keeping a person alive for days, weeks or months, even when their heart or lungs don’t work,” the Kaiser Health News Service reported.

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or ECMO (eck-moe) is considered an appropriate treatment for some patients on death’s door.

But hospitals, to maintain their competitive business standing, are battling to get the equipment and staff to provide this therapy, which costs on average half a million dollars per patient. The number of hospitals that can do ECMO has increased from 108 in 2008 to 264 now, with the number of ECMO procedures tripling since 2008 to almost 7,000 in the last count in 2014.

June 23, 2019

Opioid crisis? ‘Not my fault,’ say surgeons and drug maker’s heir

by Patrick A. Malone

As the nation’s opioid and drug overdose crisis deepens, it can be hard to watch as the “Not My Fault” crowd clucks about its blamelessness in pushing potent painkillers that have played a part in killing more Americans in 2016 and 2017 alone than lost their lives in the Vietnam War.

The latest NMF protagonists include:

David Sackler, the outrage-fueling scion of the family that owns Purdue Pharmaceutical, the maker of OxyContin. That drug — and the relentless and inaccurate sales and marketing push that the Sackler family put behind it — helped to foster a calamitous wave of prescription painkiller abuse and addiction, deep media investigations and court cases have shown. OxyContin, in turn, assisted in opening the door to lethal abuses and overdoses of even stronger legal and illicit drugs, including the painkiller fentanyl and street heroin.

June 19, 2019

Is this any way to learn you’re dying — hearing MDs chat outside exam room?

by Patrick A. Malone

Ron Naito already had been rebuffed by one specialist about the severity of his illness. He was awaiting in a doctor’s examining room for his lab test results and a consultation with a second expert about his already advanced cancer. What happened next stunned the Portland, Ore., resident. But now he’s doing something to help other patients in this way too common situation.

Naito overheard his doctor and a medical student talking about him and his lab results as they passed by the open room door, saying a tumor in his pancreas was “5 centimeters,” and was “very bad.”

That was the way Naito, who has practiced as an internist for 40 years, learned his condition was terminal. The cruel delivery of that crucial news convinced him that he needed to spend what time he has left working with his medical colleagues about their communication skills, especially in conveying the news to patients that they are dying.

June 16, 2019

For Insys, infamy in two opioid crisis firsts: convicted founder and bankruptcy

by Patrick A. Malone

Insys Therapeutics, a drug maker that peddled powerful and addictive painkillers in sordid ways, entered yet another phase of its penalties for its criminal conduct: The firm in quick fashion agreed first to pay $225 million to resolve federal bribery charges, then promptly sought bankruptcy protection.

Federal prosecutors, who earlier had won criminal racketeering convictions against the firm’s CEO and other Insys executives, emphasized that the Big Pharma firm hasn’t declared itself insolvent in its bankruptcy action and will pay up for damages caused by Susbsys, its chief product.

Subsys is a liquid containing the super potent painkiller fentanyl. It is administered as a drop under the tongue and was supposed to benefit cancer patients with grueling pain. Instead, Insys CEO John Kapoor “used speaker’s fees and lap dances to lure doctors into prescribing Subsys for far more patients than the drug was approved for and cheated insurers into covering prescriptions for the costly medication,” the Washington Post reported. Kapoor and other Insys execs await sentencing after their federal felony convictions.

May 28, 2019

Prescriptions for this painkiller abound. Evidence of its effectiveness doesn’t.

by Patrick A. Malone

Patients’ struggles with medical pain are a major problem. So, too, is the proclivity of Big Pharma, doctors, hospitals, insurers, and many others to respond to pain not only by pushing more prescription pills but also by overstating their benefits and downplaying their costs and potential harms.

As the nation grapples with an opioid painkiller crisis, New York Times columnist Jane E. Brody deserves credit for drilling down on gabapentin, “taken by millions of patients despite little or no evidence that it can relieve their pain.”

The drug won approval from the federal Food and Drug Administration a quarter century ago for treatment of seizure disorders. But it since has become a go-to medication for doctors who write “off-label” prescriptions for it to care for “all kinds of pain, acute and chronic, in addition to hot flashes, chronic cough and a host of other medical problems,” Brody wrote.