Word: painful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Mary Halm, 38, of Chillicothe, Ohio, developed a severe case of endometriosis, in which extraneous uterine tissue permeated her abdomen and left her writhing in pain. Several operations paid for by her HMO failed to remove all the offending tissue. Then her primary-care physician told Halm about a specialist in Atlanta who had developed a novel technique for treating the disease. The HMO refused to refer her, saying there were plenty of specialists in Ohio who could care for her. (Name one, she said. They wouldn't.) Halm appealed the decision for nine months with no response. Finally...
Some days the arthritis pain would get so bad that Sylvia Zebroski, 51, of Stamford, Conn., couldn't sleep. Aspirin worked for a while, but then she developed stabbing pains in her stomach. She switched to naproxen, which, like aspirin, is a so-called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, or NSAID. Same story. "I took myself off naproxen and went to my doctor in tears," she recalls. He put her on a new experimental drug, and this time, no arthritis pain--and no stomach pain. Says Zebroski: "It's made all the difference in the world...
...drug that changed Zebroski's life is just one of a new class of medications that could radically alter the way in which pain is treated in the U.S. Each year 7,600 Americans die from internal bleeding caused by long-term use of NSAIDs. The new drugs, called COX-2 inhibitors, relieve pain just about as well as aspirin and its cousins but seem to have no serious side effects. With visions of $5 billion or more in potential sales over the first five years, drug companies are racing to get their own versions of these superaspirins to market...
Just in time too. The recall two weeks ago of Duract, a potent painkiller that also killed a number of patients by causing liver failure, shows just how hard it is to develop an analgesic that's both effective and safe. But the demand for new pain medications is growing. Baby boomers are just starting to hit their arthritis-prone 50s. While the disorder currently afflicts 40 million Americans, the number could reach 60 million in the next two decades...
...NEWS ON A PAIN PILL...