Criminal actions against MD's further complicated treatment of Chronic Pain patients

MD be aware of treatment of chronic pain patients. In the emergency department (ED) we know all too well the presentation of a chronic pain patient who shows up on the weekend or after office hours complaining of pain and inability to reach their pain specialist or their primary care doctor.

Its hard to prove or disprove anything regarding chronic pain in the quick encounters we have in the ED. This story in the Sunday NY Times magazine is a frightening tale of one pain specialist who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for what appears to be treating chronic pain in a manner he deemed clinically appropriate. He was perhaps eccentric, disorganized in his record keeping, and unconventional is his dosing practices, but was he a criminal?

Click the link and read this engrossing cover story.

Ethylene Glycol poison in OTC med kills dozens of Haitian Children

Click on the link above for the second article in the NY Times regarding tainted glycerin exported from China to countries all over the world which over the past 10-15 years has resulted in many deaths (hundreds, perhaps thousands).

This series is frightening from the perspective of an emergency medicine physician. If this happened in my town would I be astute enough to pick up on it. Luckily the FDA has been applying some simple tests to pharmaceutical raw materials to test for dangerous ethylene glycol contamination. But for the international crowd or border crowd someone who walks in with a bottle of cough syrup purchased from outside the USA and signs of ethylene glycol toxicity then beware.