Clinical Management of the Elderly Patient in Pain (Haworth Series in Clinical Pain and Symptom Palliation)

Uptodate information on pain managementincluding options to consider when conventional treatment is ineffectiveProviding effective treatment for painespecially to elderly clientscan be a vexing problem for even the most knowledgeable clinician. In Clinical Management of the Elderly Patient in Pain, some of the worlds leading authorities describe the unique difficulties that arise when trying to provide pain relief to elderly patients. They examine conventional treatment with opioid and nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs along with a broad range of alternatives to consider when frontline drugs fail. Nondrug options for pain relief from the fields of physical medicine and psychology are also explored.Essential topics addressed in Clinical Management of the Elderly Patient in Pain include: pain as an aspect of advancing agehow pharmacology differs in elderly patientsavailable therapeutic options, including opioids, nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs, antiepileptic drugs, tricyclic antidepressants, membrane stabilizers, and topical agentsphysical medicine approachespsychological approaches to pain in the elderlyMost publications on this subject focus on the use of opioids, nonsteroidal drugs, and other commonly prescribed analgesics. Clinical Management of the Elderly Patient in Pain takes a different approach. Editor Gary McCleane, MD, says, Our need, with elderly patients, is to provide treatment that is both effective and easily tolerated. This is not a book devoted to opioids and nonsteroidals, although they are addressed. Nor is it about those analgesics used in younger patients being used in smaller doses with the elderly. Rather, it contains practical options for treating pain when other simple remedies fail to help. At times this will involve using conventional analgesics in scaleddown doses, but at others it will involve using substances not yet fully recognized as possessing analgesic properties because they fit the bill in terms of possible analgesic actions, sideeffect profiles, and lack of drug/drug interactionsand because practical experience suggests they may be useful in the scenario described.Clinical Management of the Elderly Patient in Pain is designed as a point of interface between the specialist pain practitioner and the clinician faced with all the problems of satisfactorily managing pain in elderly patients. It presents commonsense, practical, patientoriented options that make it a useful resource for busy clinicians.