Wilmont Kreis

Trends in opiate use: When I first practiced orthopedics, outpatient pain medicine generally included codeine, Darvon, Tylenol, and aspirin. In my opinion, patients did rather well with these medicines. As time went on, stronger (and more dangerous) drugs reached the market and names like Dilaudid, Demerol, Vicodin, Lortab, Oxycontin, and Fentanyl emerged and have seen increased use annually. As these medicines became more widely used they became more available via appropriate and inappropriate sources. Now I regularly see patients with relatively simple injuries who state, “I just took a couple of my wife’s Vicodin. This appalls me. Worse yet, they are becoming available to children. Teens often find a ready source of these dangerous narcotics in grandma’s medicine chest ready for their personal use, or sale on the streets.