Undertreatment of pain and low use of opioids in Latin America.

Pain is highly prevalent among the adult Latin American population. However, many patients with moderate to severe pain do not have access to effective pain management with opioids due to limited access to healthcare, overuse of nonopioid analgesics, regulatory barriers and lack of appropriate information about opioids. There is scarce training on use of opioids among physicians and other healthcare providers, which leads to misconceptions, mainly related to a fear of prescribing opioids.

Latin-American guidelines for opioid use in chronic nononcologic pain.

Aim: Latin-American experts in the use of opioids in patients with chronic nononcologic pain (CNOP) have updated existing recommendations to current Latin-American reality.

Methods: Several key opinion leaders from Latin America participated in a face-to-face meeting in Guatemala (April 2015) to discuss the use of opioids in CNOP. Subgroups of experts worked on specific topics, reviewed the literature and shaped the final manuscript.