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Andrea Ryan, Andrea Sereda and Nadia Fairbairn (CMAJ December 07, 2020 192 (49) E1731) draw attention to the anxiety some physicians feel about prescribing opioids: "Supporting clinicians to prescribe without fear of reprisal may affect access to safer supply." In British Columbia presently, young primary care physicians are indeed becoming College-fearful of prescribing codeine for their elderly patients. Concerned this tendency might become Canada wide, I write to promote compassionate access to codeine.
These particular doctors may be distracted by all the talk of Medically Assisted Dying, when they should be paying closer attention to Medically Assisted Ageing, a much more drawn out affair. If alcohol is the anaesthesia by which we endure the operation of life (GBS), then surely codeine is a credible supplement in the PAR of later life. For most of our lifetime, seniors have probably not had much more than a bottle of Aspirin in their medicine cabinet, but as the built-in machinery of a self-destructing organism gradually takes hold, this drug nihilism cannot last.
It is essential doctors understand that ready access to the occasional T3 can be a real boon for many septuagenarians/octogenarians as they weather the assorted ailments that will undoubtedly beset them. Codeine, surely a pluripotential drug, will settle that sleep-depriving dry cough of winter; shut down those occasional summer "runs"; relieve the Tylenol-resistant wet wea...
Show MoreCompeting Interests: None declared.References
- Andrea Ryan, Andrea Sereda, Nadia Fairbairn. Measures to support a safer drug supply. CMAJ 2020;192:E1731-E1731.