YES, so even patients with addictions are real humans who deserve care when they get injured or have surgery. Earth shattering concept isn’t it?? So what do we do when you have an injury.
Thankfully the medication itself (suboxone) is a great tool for pain management so sometimes we’ll adjust that dose (DONT adjust it yourself!!!) sometimes we’ll add other opiates to it to get better pain control.
Other times, if you are having a large surgery we may have to come off the suboxone for a while and then really follow you carefully. If you have a larger surgery we will use safeguards to monitor your progress.
One thing that really helps us is if you have a loved one/spouse/partner that can help manage medications during that time.
Our goal is to keep the addiction or dependence under control while still treating the pain like we would with any other patient.
There are a few newer pain meds out there that play nicely with suboxone so we have options.
Since depression, anxiety and other mental health issues create worse pain we will really focus on that as well and try to get that in really good control.
We really try to tailor your medication regimen to what works for you.