Current and Emerging Pharmacologic Therapies for Pain and Challenges Which Still Lay Ahead
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This chapter seeks to provide a concise overview of the pharmacologic armamentarium available to treat pain. Drugs will be
discussed in terms of their indications, mechanisms of action, and major side effects. For the purposes of this chapter, analgesics
will be divided into two groups: current and emerging; current analgesics will be further subdivided into older analgesics
and newer analgesics. Older analgesics will refer to drugs that have had FDA approval or were used off label for pain before
1990. Newer analgesics will refer to drugs developed or approved for treating pain since 1990. Finally, emerging analgesics
will refer to drugs that have pre-clinical data or phase I/II data to suggest efficacy in treating pain but have not been
validated by larger Phase III clinical trials. The chapter concludes with a chart that seeks to highlight current problems
involved in pain pharmacotherapy.