Tatsuya Fujii, Koshi Takana, Sumihisa Orita, Gen Inoue, Nobuyasu Ochiai, Kazuki Kuniyoshi, Yasuchika Aoki, Tetsuhiro Ishikawa, Masayuki Miyagi, Hiroto Kamoda, Miyako Suzuki, Yoshihiro Sakuma, Gou Kubota, Yasuhiro Oikawa, Kazuhide Inage, Takeshi Sainoh, Jun Sato, Kazuyo Yamauchi, Tomoaki Toyone, Junichi Nakamura, Shunji Kishida, Kazuhisa Takahashi, Seiji Ohtori
PURPOSE: Opioids improve pain from knee and hip osteoarthritis (OA) and decrease the functional impairment of patients. However, there is a possibility that opioids induce analgesia and suppress the physiological pain of OA in patients, thereby inducing the progression of OA changes in these patients. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the possibility of progressive changes in OA among patients using opioids. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Two hundred knee or hip OA patients were evaluated in the current prospective, randomized, active-controlled study...
September 2014: Yonsei Medical Journal