Pain management suffered an important set back in the past few years, with the emergence of an opioid crisis in the USA. Between 2013 and 2017, the number of opioid-related deaths increased by 90%, jumping from about 25 000 to more than 47 000 cases. At first, this growth in opioid overdose was mostly driven by prescription of opioids for pain management, especially when they were combined with benzodiazepines. With time, however, the crisis evolved into a more complex problem, as overdoses by illicitly manufactured fentanyl or fentanyl analogues mixed together started to rise. At the same time, other high-income countries, such as Canada and Australia, began to report a similar scenario, and several countermeasures were put in place worldwide to amend the situation. The opioid prescription guidelines published during this period discouraged physicians from prescribing opioids if the risks outweighed the benefits and encouraged them to minimise the duration of treatment and the initial dosage offered to patients.

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没有阿片类药物流行的生活：我们走了多远？

在过去几年中，随着美国出现阿片类药物危机，疼痛管理遭受了重大挫折。在2013年至2017年期间，与阿片类药物有关的死亡人数增加了90％，从约25,000例跃升至47,000多例。起初，阿片类药物过量的这种增长主要是由处方阿片类药物治疗疼痛引起的，尤其是当它们与苯二氮卓类药物合用时。然而，随着时间的流逝，随着非法制造的芬太尼或芬太尼类似物混合在一起的过量使用，这种危机演变成一个更加复杂的问题。同时，其他高收入国家，例如加拿大和澳大利亚，也开始报告类似的情况，并且在世界范围内采取了一些对策来纠正这种情况。