Ondansetron does not prevent physical dependence in patients taking opioid medications chronically for pain control.

Objectives: In this study, we investigated the co-administration of ondansetron with morphine, and whether it could prevent the development of physical dependence in patients taking opioids for the treatment of chronic pain.

Methods: A total of 48 chronic back pain patients (N = 48) participated in this double-blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized study. Patients were titrated onto sustained-release oral morphine and randomized to take 8 mg ondansetron or placebo three times daily concurrently with morphine during the 30-day titration.

Ondansetron Does Not Reduce Withdrawal in Patients With Physical Dependence on Chronic Opioid Therapy.

Objectives: Individuals taking opioids for an extended period of time may become physically dependent, and will therefore experience opioid withdrawal should they stop taking the medication. Previous work in animal and human models has shown that the serotonin (5-HT3) receptor may be implicated in opioid withdrawal. In this study, we investigated if ondansetron, a 5-HT3-receptor antagonist, could reduce the symptoms of opioid withdrawal after chronic opioid exposure in humans.

Acute opioid withdrawal is associated with increased neural activity in reward-processing centers in healthy men: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

Background: Opioid analgesics are frequently prescribed for chronic pain. One expected consequence of long-term opioid use is the development of physical dependence. Although previous resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have demonstrated signal changes in reward-associated areas following morphine administration, the effects of acute withdrawal on the human brain have been less well-investigated.

Mobile computing in medical education: opportunities and challenges.

Purpose Of Review: There is an increasing importance of incorporating mobile computing into the academic medical environment. A growing majority of physicians, residents and medical students currently use mobile devices for education, access to clinical information and to facilitate bedside care. Therefore, it is important to assess the current opportunities and challenges in the use of mobile computing devices in the academic medical environment.

Analgesic tolerance without demonstrable opioid-induced hyperalgesia: a double-blinded, randomized, placebo-controlled trial of sustained-release morphine for treatment of chronic nonradicular low-back pain.

Although often successful in acute settings, long-term use of opioid pain medications may be accompanied by waning levels of analgesic response not readily attributable to advancing underlying disease, necessitating dose escalation to attain pain relief. Analgesic tolerance, and more recently opioid-induced hyperalgesia, have been invoked to explain such declines in opioid effectiveness over time. Because both phenomena result in inadequate analgesia, they are difficult to distinguish in a clinical setting.

Information technology and its role in anaesthesia training and continuing medical education.

Today's educators are faced with substantial challenges in the use of information technology for anaesthesia training and continuing medical education. Millennial learners have uniquely different learning styles than previous generations of students. These preferences distinctly incorporate the use of digital information technologies and social technologies to support learning.