Chronic pain medications

Targeted use works best

It's not uncommon to think that pain can be relieved by a drug. That's because for shorter term pain — such as due to a headache, an injury or surgery — pain medications or other methods of pain control often work fairly well.

But when pain becomes chronic — meaning it doesn't go away with time — these medications may not work as well. Medications may begin to lose their effectiveness with longer term use, and some even begin to make pain worse or cause other unacceptable side effects, particularly in older adults. With chronic pain, medications alone usually aren't sufficient to control the problem efficiently for the long term. In fact, overuse of medications for this purpose frequently becomes part of the problem.

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