Newest book on chronic pain

Physician Group to Release Online Pain Management Text

By Todd Zwillich

WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) Sept 08 - US medical students will soon have access to a free, comprehensive Internet-based textbook on pain management under a plan by a physicians group announced on Monday.

A nine-chapter "virtual text book" on the causes and treatment of pain will be available by September 2004. The project's directors said their aim is to increase future doctors' awareness of patients' pain and how to treat it. The textbook is being financed with money from a major manufacturer of pain medications.

Backers of the project, called Topics in Pain Medicine, or TOP MED, said that the compendium will offer instruction and self-testing on cancer pain, chronic pain, and ethnic and cultural factors in pain treatment that are lacking at most medical schools.

"Too few medical students are receiving adequate instruction on pain," said Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, president emeritus of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta and US Secretary of Health and Human Services from 1989 to 1993. Morehouse is one of three medical schools where the textbook will be tested for effectiveness upon its release.

Information in the online book will be based on "best practices" in pain diagnosis and treatment, said Dr. Daniel B. Carr, a pain researcher at the New England Medical Center at Tufts University in Boston and TOP MED's editor-in-chief.

The text is being produced by the American Academy of Pain Medicine with a grant from Purdue Pharma. The company makes several prescription analgesics, including the narcotic OxyContin.

Only 4 of the nation's 126 medical schools require students to complete coursework in pain management, said Dr. Jordan J. Cohen, president of the American Association of Medical Colleges. About one third of the schools offer electives in dealing with patient pain.

"It is fragmented. It is distributed throughout a whole range of courses in medical school," he said.

TOP MED will be offered free of charge to all US medical students, who will use it purely on an elective basis, Dr. Carr said. The online book will join many other traditional textbooks on pain management already available to US doctors and students.

"I think this one has inherent appeal," Dr. Cohen said in an interview. "[Students] know that pain care is something they're going to be confronted with."

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