Dry Needles and Laughing Gas Are One ER’s Solution to Painkiller Abuse
Let’s face it, opioid abuse isn’t going away and, in fact, it’s getting worse. As the years go on, more and more people are getting hooked on painkillers and winding up on heroin, as many of us have. Emergency rooms are some of the places where a person can be first exposed to opioids. Broken bones, muscle spasms, injuries, and back pain are all reasons why people visit ERs every day, all over the country. Traditionally, they’re given opioids like Vicodin and Percocet to treat their painful conditions and often times, it results in addiction. Seeing addiction rates shoot through the roof, one ER in New Jersey has created an alternative program that moves away from painkiller use and instead, offers some interesting alternatives.
The ER at St. Joseph’s University Medical Center in Paterson, New Jersey has come up with an alternative program to treat pain. Being in one of the many epicenters of the opioid crisis, this ER has seen its share of addicts come through their doors. Years ago, if you went to emergency room, complaining of pain, you were offered painkillers. Now, as the first line of defense for painful situations, the New Jersey emergency room is now using non-traditional methods for pain relief, like the dry needling of a trigger point for muscle spasms or cramps. It’s a condition that only exists in a concentrated area of the body and it’s often hard for opioids to get into it. By dry needling the area, it can break up the bound-up muscle tissue and actually stop the pain. Other anesthetics like lidocaine are also being used. Other alternative analgesics are being used as well such as ultrasounds to find inflamed nerves that can be treated with numbing medications, nitrous oxide or laughing gas that can be used to calm a patient down and ease pain, using NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory) medications first, before using painkillers, and having a harp player in the hallways as means of soothing and relaxing patients.
Dr. Mark Rosenberg, St. Joseph’s Healthcare System’s chair of emergency medicine who launched the Alternatives to Opiates program said, “There is a complete change in philosophy, a complete change in culture in the department.” Since the program began, the emergency room saw a 58% decrease in opioid prescriptions in the first year, which is amazing.
I think this is a great approach at trying to handle the abysmal opioid epidemic. While I don’t 100% agree with the use of laughing gas, I am happy to hear of the ER using practices such as dry needling and using non-opioid medications and ultrasounds. It seems like instead of just throwing prescriptions at someone, they’re actually interested in figuring out the source of a person’s pain. And that’s the whole thing…getting to real, root cause of something is the only way to actually handle it. The same goes for addiction. If you want to get clean and sober, you have to get the core root of why you use drugs in the first place. If more ER’s were following St. Joseph’s University Medical Center’s approach to treating pain, we may really start to see some amazing changes.
