Health News: CDC Outs Firm Guidelines on Painkiller Use

Following the increase of death rates from narcotic painkillers, the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued new guidelines to help avoid drug addiction resulting to further deaths.

According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, the CDC released tough guidelines on Tuesday discouraging physicians from using addictive painkillers as drug abuse has been linked to several narcotic painkillers such as Oxycontin, Percocet, and Vicodin.

On the other hand, the new guidelines exempt patients who are suffering from chronic pain such as joint or back pain, dental pain, and other related conditions, particularly cancer-related pain. As expected, terminally ill patients in palliative care, who need the narcotic pain killers, are also among the people exempted from the new guidelines.

CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said, "More than 40 Americans die each and every day from prescription opioid overdoses."

Opioid drugs are made from opium, a reddish-brown drug obtained from the juices of the poppy plant and is known to ease extreme pain. Also called opiates or narcotics, these drugs are starting to cause an outbreak of drug addiction around the world and according to Frieden, prescribing the drugs only fuel the epidemic further.

"Increased prescribing of opioids -- which has quadrupled since 1999 -- is fueling an epidemic that is blurring the lines between prescription opioids and illicit opioids," he said.

Before CDC announced high numbers of fatal drug overdoses in the U.S. during the holidays, the government has tried to stop the rising trend. President Barack Obama spearheaded an initiative to stop further deaths linked to drug overdoses.

WebMD notes that the use of opioids to control pain isn't likely to result to addiction but the drugs can be highly intoxicating when taken in high doses, which is why CDC said in its guidelines that primary care physicians around the country should prescribe "the lowest possible effective dosage."

Symptoms of narcotic abuse include euphoria, shallow breathing, nausea, vomiting, analgesia, flushed skin, constipation, and sedation.