July 25, 2019

Episode 143 | Eric Sun, MD: Is Early Physical Therapy Associated With Less Opioid Use By Patients With Musculoskeletal Pain?

22 minutes

We’ve got an episode that is full of some good news that I can’t wait to share with you. When I first started this podcast over a few years ago, the CDC had released information about the opioid crisis as well as the overprescribing of opioids and its contribution to addiction, abuse and fatalities. Since then, the CDC guidelines have been pushing toward early non-drug or what is known as non-pharmacologic treatment options for patients with pain. We are definitely making some progress. Along with these guidelines, there’s a huge opportunity for physical therapists to help people who are struggling with chronic pain. One way we can do this is to intervene quickly and early in the care of people with pain. I spoke about this a bit in Episode 133 with Dr. Marcia Spoto, who discussed physical therapists as primary spine care providers.

In this episode, we’ll explore how the research is supporting early physical therapy for people with pain. A study conducted by our guest, Dr. Eric Sun, found that patients who receive early physical therapy within the first 90 days use less opioids for pain. Eric is an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology, Pain Medicine, and Health and Research Policy at Stanford University and Medical Center in California. He spends part of his time working as an anesthesiologist and part of his time as an epidemiologist, crunching numbers and big data on important topics. It was published in 2018 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. I know you’re going to enjoy this show. Make sure to hop on over to the IntegrativePainScienceInstitute.com/podcasts. You’ll see a box where you can subscribe to the Healing Pain Podcast so I can send you a new podcast to your inbox. Let’s begin with Dr. Eric Sun and learn about how early physical therapy can lead to less opioid use.

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