Abstract

As many as 50 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, opioid therapy is often the treatment modality to provide relief. Unfortunately, the long-term use of opioids can have the untoward effect of reduced effectiveness and opioid-tolerance. Often, this situation eventually leads the patient to seek surgical intervention for the relief of their pain. Anesthesia providers then find themselves facing the complex issue of providing adequate pain control to these opioid-tolerant patients while ensuring safe care in the surgical and postoperative settings. A case study was conducted which focused on an opioid-tolerant patient who underwent spinal surgery. The patient had been prescribed opioid therapy for chronic back pain. Over the last four years, the patient's pain continued to worsen while his opioid consumption increased to a point that the patient and surgeon agreed surgical intervention would be the next step.

Magen Ramsey

Author Details

Magen Ramsey, DNP (c)

Sigma Membership

Non-member

Lead Author Affiliation

Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama, USA

Type

DNP Capstone Project

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Literature Review

Research Approach

Translational Research/Evidence-based Practice

Keywords:

Dexmedetomidine, Opioid-tolerant Patient, Intraoperative Analgesia, Postoperative Analgesia, Multi-modal Analgesia

Advisor

Fort, David

Second Advisor

Greenway, Mary Beth

Degree

DNP

Degree Grantor

Samford University

Degree Year

2021

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2021-03-24

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