Back to the Basics: Managing Pain Months After COVID-19

Harry Gould, MD, PhD

A year ago, the United States was in the midst of understanding and dealing with the complexities of the “Opioid Epidemic”, what until then had been considered the greatest healthcare crisis in U.S. history. Although improvements in some aspects of the crisis were starting to be realized as a result of the development of best evidence-based practice guidelines and the implementation of regulatory mandates for prescribing and monitoring treatment response, we were a long way from achieving our goal; to provide optimum care and improve quality of life for those in pain without causing harm to the patients, the healthcare system or society as a whole.

In many cases, the strides that had been made in mitigating the opioid crisis did not come without their own problems. The change of assessment, prescribing and monitoring standards imposed an unacceptable burden on many well-meaning physicians, who wished to help without harming their patients, but realized that compensation for the time necessary to comply with essential regulatory demands was inadequate. Because compensation issues were accompanied by fear of reprisal for non-compliance, many chose not to provide care for their patients’ pain problems, thus limiting patients’ options for identifying resources for appropriate evaluation and management of ongoing and persistent problems or for complications associated with previous inappropriate misuse, abuse or prescribing of treatments. The resulting uncertainty of care set the stage for frustration, stress, anxiety, anger and depression, each confounding factors in the management of uncontrolled pain.  

If addressing these options weren’t enough of a challenge, a new crisis, “the 2019-nCoV virus (COVID-19) pandemic” emerged in the population. The virulence of the virus, the uncertainty about its course and management, the frustration, stress and depression associated with individual isolation and distancing and the additional limitations on access to proper evaluation, delays in initiating possible condition-limiting treatment, follow up and monitoring of patients requiring controlled medications acutely added to the already present confounding factors that have hindered optimal recovery from the opioid crisis for both patients and practitioners alike.

Unfortunately, the distribution of promising new vaccines and potential control of the current pandemic may not completely eliminate the negative influence that the virus has had on delivering pain care. We are learning that a significant number of individuals, the “long-haulers,” who have survived a COVID-19 infection report experiencing persistent cardiac, pulmonary, renal, psychologic and neurologic problems consistent with direct or indirect multisystem injury as a result of the virus. The distribution and mechanism of injury producing the pain is unknown and likely multifactorial, but presentations are frequently multifocal and possess features of nociceptive and neuropathic pain with a hint of psychogenic quality consistent with organic central and/or peripheral nervous system involvement and the influence of post-traumatic psychosocial stress associated with contracting and fighting the disease. Optimal management of these complex pain problems will likely require a return to the basics promoted by John Bonica and others, that of a comprehensive and multimodal evaluation and the orchestration of pharmacologic, interventional, physical and psychological treatment modalities at all levels of the healthcare system.

As incoming president of the Southern Pain Society, I look forward to–and encourage others to work with me to — learn from healthcare providers and basic and clinical scientists from all specialties to improve and refine assessment skills, to identify viable treatment options and management planning and to provide continued education for clinicians in practice and those new to the field, in the hope of optimizing the quality of life for patients in pain.