Chronic Pain Of The Elderly ( 65 Years Of Age ) Essay

In recent years, chronic pain in the elderly (65 years of age) is a significant problem. Chronic pain increases with age due to increases in the incidence of diseases such as arthritis, cancer, diabetes mellitus, and cardiovascular and neurological diseases. Detection and management of chronic pain especially in the elderly is often inadequate and continues to pose a challenge for physicians. The detection of chronic pain in patients can be measured with a pain scoring system of a scale of 1 to 10 which assesses the severity of the patient’s pain. The presence of depression and confusion can complicate the pain detection assessment which sometimes provide unreliable results, therefore, applying the conservative and interventional therapies in these patients may be difficult. Patients who experience chronic pain, experience abnormal body functioning and affects their quality of life and opioids are given to them for pain relief (Vadivelu Hines, 2008). In some cases, these patients are opioid dependent. According to Wikipedia (2014), opioid dependent is a medical diagnosis characterized by an individual s inability to stop using opiates (morphine, heroin, codeine, oxycodone, hydrocodone) even when the drug is given for the patients best interest, and this is a major component of opioid addiction. Although the relationships between chronic pain disorders and the diverse types of chemical dependency are complex and clinically relevant, there have been few studies thatShow MoreRelatedNursing Career: Three Most Common Assessment Tools Essay1514 Words   |  7 Pagesare, the pain scale, fall risk scale, and the depression scale. To provide the best care for their elderly patients, nurses must incorporate pain assessment into their daily care of patients. Pain assessment is a key aspect of the nurse’s role. 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