News

Please Read This Leaflet Carefully by Karen Havelin Dead Ink Books, 320pp, £11.99 ISBN: 978-1911585541 Published May 2019 Review by Sarah Edwards This novel is written from the perspective of Laura, a young woman with endometriosis. It tracks her life backwards from 2016, as a working mother in New York, all the way ...

The World Health Organization (WHO) has updated the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). For the first time, they have included chronic pain and provided specific pain diagnoses. Under the new system, chronic pain is classified as either chronic primary pain or chronic secondary pain. Chronic primary pain is defined ...

NICE guidance on cannabis-based medicines out for consultation The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has issued draft guidance for the use of cannabis-based medicines considering the evidence for their use in intractable nausea and vomiting; chronic pain; spasticity and epilepsy. It covers other related topics, ...

The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) has made 2019 their ‘Global Year against Pain in the Most Vulnerable’. The groups included in IASP’s Global Year against Pain in the Most Vulnerable are: older persons (including pain in dementia), infants and young children, individuals with ...

As mentioned in the Latest News post of 17th October 2018 - and also featured in the forthcoming issue, issue 71, of Pain Matters - as of 1st April 2019, prescription drugs Pregabalin and Gabapentin are to be reclassified as Class C controlled substances. NHS England has just published updated ...

A recent article on the academic and current affairs website, The Conversation, by Professor Blair Smith from the University of Dundee, regarding his team’s study on the global increase in opioid use, has sparked debate over the overprescription of opioids in the UK. Professor Smith has found ...

Cannabis and Chronic Pain The journal Pain recently published an important study on the use of cannabis, and medicines based on cannabis (cannabinoids), for chronic pain conditions (chronic pain in cancer patients was specifically excluded). Researchers were from institutes in Sydney, Brisbane and London specialising in substance abuse ...

Full text: "Prescription drugs pregabalin and gabapentin are to be reclassified as class C controlled substances from next April, the government announced today (15 October). Today’s move comes after experts highlighted rising numbers of fatalities linked to the drugs. The change means it will be illegal to possess pregabalin ...

Dinah Milsom, poet and supporter of Pain Concern, has written a poem expressing her experiences with pain. She asked us to post this on our website so other people in pain may read it. Pain The light glows The heart knows This pain endures And so I make ...

A study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that treatment with opioids was not superior to treatment with non-opioid medications in patients with chronic back pain, hip or knee osteoarthritis pain. You can find the full study here: http://ow.ly/veOf30iO8ms ...

Monday 23rd  October 2017 Government moves to reclassify pain medications pregabalin and gabapentin create  fear and anxiety for people living with long-term pain Health charity Pain Concern is warning that moves to restrict prescribed painkillers pregabalin and gabapentin over their association with rising death rates and mis-use would have ...

We at Pain Concern wish to address the recent articles published in Pulse Today titled ‘Pregabalin and gabapentin set to become controlled drugs’ on the 21st September, and the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on the 25th September 2017 titled ‘UK government to reclassify pregabalin and gabapentin after ...