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June 1997
Volume 61 |
Number 6
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| 20,000 People
Look for Answers From Pain Hotline |
-- "I've had lower back pain for the past
two years. What can I do?"
-- "Are there any new pain relievers that
will help my migraine headaches?"
-- "My elderly mother has recurrent hip
pain, but her family doctor says it's something she will have
to learn to live with. Isn't there anything that could
help her?"
-- "I have rheumatoid arthritis but can't
take aspirin due to macular degeneration. The 500 mg of Tylenol
I take each day doesn't seem to help. Is there something else
I could take?"
-- "I am a teacher, and right now I am calling
from my classroom. The students are studying pain and several
of the students have questions about their pain problems ..."
These and other questions poured into the special telephone lines
that were set up for the USA Today Pain Hotline on April
16, 1997. The internationally distributed USA Today newspaper,
in cooperation with ASA, sponsored the Pain Hotline at the newspaper's
headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.
Fifty-six anesthesiologists volunteered to staff the hotline
telephones to answer questions from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m from the public
about pain. USA Today announced the hotline in its page-one
banner and invited readers to call a toll-free telephone number
to have "Anesthesiologists answer questions about new treatments
to alleviate, prevent or manage pain."
Several times a year, USA Today sponsors a hotline on
various health or financial topics to provide its readers with
important information and allow the public to get answers firsthand
to their questions from the experts in their fields. This was
the first hotline that the newspaper featured on "the causes
of pain and what you can do about it."
Announcements about the hotline appeared the day before, and
several prominently placed articles on pain management appeared
the day of the hotline. The articles, which appeared in the Life
section, included the prevalence of pain in our society, new developments
and research in the treatment of chronic pain, interviews with
some patients who have successfully obtained pain relief from
anesthesiologists, and the legal risks physicians could face when
prescribing narcotics to patients for pain.
USA Today also publicized the hotline on its Web site
beginning on April 14, where the public was able to submit questions
via e-mail. The newspaper received more than 250 questions through
its Web site.
Phones Never Stopped Ringing
Hotline volunteers answered 1,777 questions in the 12-hour period,
but there were another 18,420 calls that could not get through
due to the extremely busy telephone lines. From the time the telephones
were turned on at 9 a.m. until they were shut off, the telephones
did not stop ringing.
Since then, ASA has received more than 100 requests from the
public looking for more information about pain management and
the location of pain treatment facilities in their areas. Yet
even these numbers represent only a fraction of the 79 million
people who suffer with chronic pain conditions.
According to ASA President Phillip O. Bridenbaugh, M.D., who
was a hotline volunteer, "The hotline allowed my colleagues
and me to deliver important and immediate information to people
who were looking to relieve the pain in their lives or the lives
of their loved ones."
Callers to the hotline presented the volunteers with a wide range
of questions-- ranging from back pain to arthritis, headaches
to neuropathy. Questions about back pain made up the largest percentage
of calls to the hotline (34.7 percent). More than 24 percent of
the callers were looking for information and relief from hip,
elbows, neck, ankle and foot pain. The other calls were about
pain associated with systemic diseases (15.5 percent), arthritis
(7.5 percent), fibromyalgia (4.9 percent), headaches (4 percent),
over-the-counter and prescription medications (3.7 percent), neuropathy
(2.7 percent) and neuralgia (2.3 percent).
Hotline volunteer Dominick J. Iaconetti, M.D., of Fairfax Hospital,
Great Falls, Virginia, said he was struck by the depth of knowledge
many callers had about their conditions and available medications.
"What was most distressing was to hear from those people
who live in rural areas and don't have access to pain therapy
provided by medical specialists that many of them need,"
Dr. Iaconetti said.
National Exposure in the Media
Coverage of the hotline continued the following day on April
17, when another prominent article was published in USA Today's
Life section that included a sampling of the many questions received
at the hotline and the responses given by the anesthesiologists.
The Pain Hotline also captured the interest of a New York syndicated
radio program. The host of the health-related program did a live
15-minute interview via telephone with hotline volunteer Douglas
G. Merrill, M.D., Phoenix, Arizona, which was heard on 80 radio
stations across the United States. The Pain Hotline also provided
material for "NBC Tonight Show" host Jay Leno, who made
the hotline the subject of a short comedy sketch in his show on
April 17.
If you missed the coverage in USA Today, ASA has established
an Internet link from the ASA Web site to the newspaper's Pain
Hotline Web site.
The USA Today Pain Hotline was the culmination of more
than 19 months of effort by the Society toward establishing with
the media and the public that anesthesiologists are the
medical experts in pain management.
"Hello, This Is the Pain Hotline
..."
Maywin Liu, M.D.
Andrew J. Mannes, M.D.
This hotline provided us with some insight into the public's
perception of pain and how their pain is currently treated. We
each had the opportunity to spend approximately three hours answering
questions. Calls came from people of all ages and regions of the
country (and several from outside the United States).
Although the questions covered a wide range of topics, there
were several areas of interest that recurred with great frequency.
These included questions on headaches, fibromyalgia, low back
pain, arthritis and new or experimental drugs. Most interestingly,
a number of people called regarding their managed care plans that
were limiting their access to specialists despite their primary
care physician's difficulty in diagnosing or managing their pain.
From comments made, it appeared that some plans are limiting health
care resources at the expense of good patient care. Some patients
called regarding news about newer therapies or drugs available
for pain management.
Unfortunately, many people did not seem to be aware of pain as
a specialty area or did not realize the anesthesiologist's role
in pain management. One typical comment was, "So they don't
only put people to sleep?" This hotline provided the opportunity
for the anesthesiology community to better inform the public not
only of the importance of our role in pain management but also
to encourage them to seek improved therapy for pain control. From
the callers' comments, ignorance regarding available pain therapies
is not only prevalent among patients but their treating physicians
as well.
Despite the recent efforts and guidelines for pain management
by multiple organizations and committees, including ASA and the
American Pain Society, a great deal of additional work needs to
be done to improve public awareness of pain management. Participating
in the "Pain Hotline" helped us realize how large some
of the gaps in public education may be. The hotline also gave
us an opportunity to rectify part of the situation by making the
public much more aware of the importance of anesthesiologists
in pain management.
We Thank Our Pain Hotline Volunteers
ASA gratefully acknowledges and congratulates the 56 ASA members
who volunteered to answer telephones as part of the USA Today
Pain Hotline on April 16, 1997.
Timothy E. Baldwin, M.D.
David S. Beebe, M.D.
Casey D. Blitt, M.D.
Thomas B. Bralliar, M.D.
Jeffrey D. Brand, M.D.
Phillip O. Bridenbaugh, M.D.
Diann H. Bridenbaugh, M.D.
William E. Brideweser, M.D.
May Lin Chin, M.D.
Shep Cohen, M.D.
Thomas H. Cromwell, M.D.
John S. Cross, M.D.
Patty J. Davidson, M.D.
Peter J. Dunbar, M.D.
Norig Ellison, M.D.
Mark T. Flanery, M.D.
Paul D. Gilmore, M.D.
Jay Gonchigar, M.D.
Wallace H. Good, Jr., M.D. |
Alexander W. Gotta, M.D.
Joanne C. Hudson, M.D.
John M. Huffman, M.D.
Dominick J. Iaconetti, M.D.
Joanne Jene, M.D.
Mark D. Kline, M.D.
Man Q. Le, M.D.
Bill L. Little, M.D.
Maywin Liu, M.D.
Linda F. Lucas, M.D.
Ronald A. MacKenzie, D.O.
Rosemarie Maddi, M.D.
Andrew J. Mannes, M.D.
Willis A. McGill, M.D.
James P. McMichael, M.D.
Douglas G. Merrill, M.D.
Thomas J. Moran, D.O.
Ervin Moss, M.D.
Sunil J. Panchal, M.D. |
Karen M. Park, M.D.
Paul S. Patane, M.D.
Paul A. Pudimat, M.D.
James P. Rathmell, M.D.
Colletta A. Richards, M.D.
Richard L. Richter, M.D.
Francis X. Riegler, M.D.
Anne M. Savarese, M.D.
Gerald M. Scheinman, M.D.
Joanne E. Shay, M.D.
Peter A. Shay, M.D.
Sandeep Sherlekar, M.D.
Christopher J. Southwick, M.D.
Stanley W. Stead, M.D.
Betty P. Stephenson, M.D.
Mack A. Thomas, M.D.
Marcelle M. Willock, M.D.
Glenn F. Zurawski, M.D. |
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