Hydromorphone - Are There Any Medical Reasons for Taking This Substance?

Are There Any Medical Reasons for Taking This Substance?

Many Americans will need treatment for pain at some point in their lives. Hydromorphone is considered a "last resort" medication for pain that has not responded to other drugs, for those who have already developed a toleranceA condition in which higher and higher doses of a drug are needed to produce the original effect or high experienced. for opiates such as morphine, and for terminally ill cancer patients. Victims of serious traffic crashes or difficult and painful surgical procedures may be given prescriptions of hydromorphone to help them through the first weeks of recovery. Occasionally, the drug is prescribed for severe back pain, but only after the existence of the pain is proven with X rays or a Magnetic Resonance Imagery (MRI).

Hydromorphone was developed, in part, to provide opiate-grade pain relief to people who have allergies to pure opiates such as morphine and codeine. With other syntheticMade in a laboratory. and semi-synthetic drugs available, use of hydromorphone has dropped in the hospital setting.

Fast Hydromorphone Facts

How much do you know about hydromorphone? Did you know that:

  • In the twentieth century, chemists altered natural morphine to produce hydromorphone, a pain reliever that could be used by people with allergies to organic morphine. The new product was marketed under the brand name Dilaudid.
  • In 2005 Purdue Pharma introduced Palladone, an extended-release form of hydromorphone. The oral pain reliever, in capsule form, provided continuous pain relief for twenty-four hours. Palladone was shipped from the manufacturer with the most advanced form of tracking technology, called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Each individual bottle of Palladone contained a tag that could be scanned electronically, tracking it as it moved from factory to pharmacy to consumer. By July 2005, Purdue Pharma voluntarily pulled the drug from the market pending further research.