Many patients on Suboxone or buprenorphine eventually require pain treatment, just like people who aren’t on buprenorphine products. I’ve written about post-op pain control several times, but I continue to get emails from patients who haven’t seen my comments and who view an upcoming surgery with the same fear experienced by patients before the early 1900’s, when the OR was correctly seen as a horror-chamber.
These patients are often torn between following the treatment plan vs. doing what they have learned may work better. In all cases, I tell patients that they cannot act in ways counter to what their physician prescribes. But I often support their intent to ask their doctors to clarify or modify their treatment plans.
Patients write about ‘the look’– the way doctors, nurses, and pharmacists react when patients ask about pain control. As a recovering addict myself, I know what they are referring to. Doctors encourage other patients to discuss concerns about pain control, and as long as they have no piercing or tattoos, patients will usually be comforted with assurances that their doctors will take their pain seriously. But people on buprenorphine often see their doctors roll their eyes, or even say that the opposite is true– that if they have pain, they had better not bother the doctor about it! Doctors who act that way are asses, of course, and I urge patients to avoid them if possible. This post is not for those doctors, as they are not likely to ‘get it’ after reading the comments of another doctor— if they would ever read them in the first place!
I’m writing for the doctors who are open to hearing about new ways to help their patients. I intend to use this post, going forward, to answer the emails from patients about this topic If you are a physician who received this from a patient, please consider my comments– as I have found the approach described below far more helpful for surgical patients on buprenorphine products than the alternatives described elsewhere. There was an NIH consensus paper a few years ago for example that described several alternatives, but mostly focused on discontinuing buprenorphine before surgery, then restarting buprenorphine at some point through a standard induction that includes 24 hours of withdrawal in patients already weakened by surgery. Standard doses of opioid agonists were recommended for pain. That approach was also described in a flashy article in one of the throw-away journals a month or two ago (i.e. Autumn of 2015).
There are so many problems with that approach:
- Patients forced to stop buprenorphine before surgery and enter surgery dehydrated and weakened (IF they even managed to stop, as many patients end up staying on buprenorphine covertly– NOT a good situation for surgery.)
- Buprenorphine discontinuation not an option for emergency surgeries;
- Constant opioid levels are necessary to avoid withdrawal, before even considering pain control;
- Buprenorphine is erroneously considered gone, when the long half-life actually assures that buprenorphine is still present;
- Patients fret and argue over pain control every time the nurses change shifts;
- Buprenorphine re-induction at some point after surgery, requiring patients to go through withdrawal symptoms;
- Agonist treatment alone causes tolerance to rise very rapidly, requiring high doses of narcotic at hospital discharge;
- An increased risk of overdose from narcotic pain medication in patients off buprenorphine;
- And many other reasons. Using the ‘discontinuation’ approach, patients end up on a Hellish roller-coaster ride where pain is grossly under-treated and withdrawal symptoms are only 4 hours away, day after day.
I’ve read emails from people whose buprenorphine doctors recommended taking more buprenorphine for post-op pain, or dosing more often. I’ve read about suggestions to use Tramadol for pain after major surgery(!)
Earlier today I sent a letter in response to a woman who is planning a series of painful procedures. I’ll share that letter to spare myself some time:
Dear A,
You’ve been through enough misery, and I hope you convince your physician to consider a different approach to your pain. I’ve had patients on buprenorphine go through many surgeries including thoracotomy, nephrectomy, open cholecystectomy, total knee replacement, and rotator cuff repair– all very painful surgeries. My experience as an anesthesiologist piques my interest in post-op pain control.
My favored approach is very simple. Maintain buprenorphine, and use oxycodone or other agonists to out-compete buprenorphine at the mu receptor as needed for pain relief. The benefits of the approach are obvious once the prescriber opens his/her mind to the realities of ligand competition. There is no need to go through withdrawal, no need for ‘comfort meds’ to tolerate the withdrawal, and no need to enter surgery in an already-weakened state. As you know, even minor withdrawal causes people to feel very depressed, lose their appetites, stop sleeping…. is that really any way to go into surgery?
As an aside, buprenorphine alone does not provide ‘real’ pain control in patients who take chronic buprenorphine. Yes, buprenorphine seems to reduce pain in people with minor pain issues. But it is of no use for the pain of major surgery. Of course in theory, why would buprenorphine treat chronic pain in patients with complete mu tolerance to a medication with a ceiling effect?
A few years ago, an NIH consensus paper described a few approaches to acute pain in patients on buprenorphine. I don’t know who was on that panel, but the paper suggested stopping buprenorphine for several days before surgery and then using agonists. The panel mentioned the approach that I favor near the end of the paper. I also described my favored approach at an annual meeting of ASAM, in a talk that was very-well received. I was optimistic that the discussion would open enough minds among prescribers to follow the neurochemistry, instead of focusing on the misplaced fear of combining an agonist and a partial agonist. There are other papers out there– and book chapters– about the effects gained by combining an agonist with a partial agonist. You can find my ASAM slides at slideshare.net.
The ‘uncoupling’ part BTW is what makes my favored approach so valuable, but that gets into the area of chronic pain, which is not entirely relevant to this discussion. In short, opioid analgesia has always been limited by tolerance and dependence. I believe that those limits can be removed by combining mu receptor agonists with partial agonists, allowing for pain relief from agonists while partial-agonists prevent euphoria and anchor tolerance at a lower level.
My approach is to reduce buprenorphine to about 4 mg per day. Higher doses in my experience get in the way of pain control. I then treat post-op pain as I would in any patient, but using 4 times more agonist (warning– see * below). I typically prescribe oxycodone, 15 mg tabs,* and direct patients to take one tab every 4 hours as needed. When patients no-longer needs narcotic analgesia, I stop the agonist and have them resume their regular doses of buprenorphine. That’s it. No tapering, and no withdrawal… just treating patients as I would any other patients, but realizing that mu receptors are competitively blocked, and effective doses of oxycodone must out-compete buprenorphine.
Dilaudid or fentanyl are not necessary. You could approach post-op pain in a very elegant way in a hospital using sublingual buprenorphine, fentanyl infusion, and PCA, but that gets a bit complicated. Oxycodone works fine. In rare cases my patients required higher doses of oxycodone, but I’ve never had reason to use more than 30 mg. Oxycodone is typically used every 4 hours. My buprenorphine patients have found good pain relief from total daily doses of 60-120 mg of oxycodone. The patients who went to a hospital where I couldn’t control their analgesia, who were told to stop buprenorphine, ended up on much higher doses of oxycodone at discharge.
Advantages of Combined Approach:
There are many advantages to maintaining buprenorphine throughout the perioperative period. The entire process is much simpler, and the patient’s experience is better because there is no euphoria, and no warm rush from oxycodone to rekindle addiction. The pain is relieved, but the reinforcing effects of oxycodone are eliminated. I assume the that the limits on mu effects by buprenorphine are like a ‘governor’ that limits the speed of fleet vehicles. You can get only so much opioid effect in the presence of buprenorphine, and not enough to cause a ‘high.’
The combined approach also prevents tolerance, which is a greater issue with chronic pain than with post-operative pain. Buprenorphine anchors tolerance at the level yielded by the ceiling effect, allowing agonist effects to continue over time. I’ve treated people with the combination of buprenorphine and oxycodone for over 2 years, and the combination continues to work as well as it did on the first day.
Some prescribers and pharmacists worry about ‘precipitated withdrawal’, but that is not an issue as long as buprenorphine is continued every day. The only way to precipitate withdrawal would be to stop buprenorphine for at least a few days, boost tolerance higher with an agonist, and then give buprenorphine– which would ‘yank’ tolerance back down again. Patients who stay on buprenorphine can add agonists without fear of precipitated withdrawal.
I’ve convinced a few doctors to try this approach, and I’ve received a number of positive reports about the approach. I’ve described the idea to several pharmaceutical companies as an approach that would revolutionize pain treatment. Can you imagine pain relief without addiction, without tolerance, and without euphoria? I realize that the large number of deaths caused by opioid overdose limits interest in opioid analgesia. But I suspect that a product that combines buprenorphine and an agonist would go a long way to reducing opioid dependence, providing that the two medications were irreversibly bonded together in a combination product. I have some thoughts about how to do that… but that’s for another day.
It is NEVER safe to prescribe one’s self opioids or other controlled substances, so this discussion is intended to provoke discussion between patients and their doctors. Patients must realize that there are many things that go into decisions about post-operative analgesia, and NO approach is the right approach for everyone. Any individual patient may have features to his/her history that make the combination approach inappropriate, or even dangerous.
*Doses described in this post are intended as approximations for consideration by trained and licensed medical professionals. Doses described may not be safe in some patients, including patients at the extremes of age, patients with respiratory or other chronic illness, patients with central nervous system disorders, or patients on other respiratory depressant medications.
NEVER use opioids except as directed by your own physician.
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