Do you find doctors too quick to prescribe medication?

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♥Imagine♥

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Do you find doctors too quick to prescribe medication?

An instance that made me wonder:

For wisdom teeth extraction, the oral surgeon routinely prescribed hydrocodone pain medication. This was even after I mentioned close relatives having bad reactions to it (I have never used it). Plus, hydrocodone is a narcotic that prevents safely driving a motor vehicle or doing many other things, can cause physical addiction, and is commonly abused. I.e. it seems like it should be a last resort pain medication (if stuff like acetaminophen does not work), rather than a routine prescription. I did not fill the prescription and used cold packs to deal with the soreness after surgery.
 
They do it to keep you from calling at night complaining of pain and having them paged....in other words, prophylactically. Just in case you have pain, you aren't a pain to them. It's always up to you whether you fill the prescription or not. A large number of the population needs pain control for an extraction so he just played the odds.

And just because you have relatives that have problems with these has little or no bearing on whether you will. My mother had a HIGH threshold for meds. Not me and my sister. I am allergic to a large number of antibiotics - my sister isn't allergic to any.
 
honestly? you should be rather thankful that you were even Rxed something for your pain,just in case(as the above poster mentioned). alot of docs would not or would not til they got a call later on about your excruciating pain you were suffering. not every dentist is as good as what your did for you,trust me. my oldest son,back when he was about 14? was not rxed anything after having a tooth pulled and believe me,we tried everything and he simply was left to suffer(even after calling and asking for some help). we no longer see that dentist anymore. that was just cruel,really. some people,and depending upon what was done,can suffer huge amounts of pain that don't respond to just ice(i personally use alot of icing for my pain,when it works), but the doc or the dentist wont Rx and take on that liability. everytime any doc or dentist Rxes a narcotic,good documentation for the need hads to be followed up or they could have some problems down the road, so some just don't bother going there and the patient suffers for it.

considering what you had done,it was left up to you,the patient whether you felt you needed it or not,and you chose not to fill that rx, at least you had a choice,and that should always at least be done when you have any procedure for anything that simply will/could cause some pretty bad pain. its having that choice that really is needed. too many people are way too undermedicated(or not at all) for their pain these days,tho it has gotten a bit better with newer laws. you were at least given some options,just in case things got too out of control BEFORE you needed it. the rest is up to you,ya know? just my opinion. ice and ibuprofen can do wonders for some,just not for all. FB
 
There are some doctors out there who do prescribe medication a little to premature. I had a friend with an infected hang nail and the doctor was going to give her a potent pain med. for it when advil or tylonal would have worked just fine. Some doctors give their patients antibiotics for viral infections where antibiotics don't work.

In your case I don't think the doctor was quick to prescribe anything. Most of the people I know who have had that procedure were grateful for the medication because of the amount of pain. Wisdom teeth extration is known as a painful procedure so that is why those types of meds are prescribed. Just because the doctor prescribed it doesn't mean you have to fill it. The prescription is there for you just in case you need it.

KDD
 
The only problem with that was that the narcotic prescription was written on the same paper as the prescription for other drugs for the surgery. So I had to decide before the surgery whether to fill it, rather than keep the narcotic prescription and fill it only if it became necessary after the surgery (the pharmacy kept the prescription paper).
 
what you can always do in that type of situation(and this was probably done too at your pharm with this one if you checked on it),is they can "store' the Rx since it WAS rxed for you and if you needed it,it is still in their system as having been Rxed at the very same time as the other meds. it IS a valid Rx and is probably there and in their system so if you still needed it post procedure,it would still be availiable up to a certain point,you know what i mean? this is usually what will occur when more than one Rx is actually written on one paper and not seperate. unless you told them to destroy it,it would probably still be listed in your personal pharm acct somewhere. just in case. sometimes the pain from any procedure, even dental can become much worse the day after, once real inflammation and the swelling hits you overnight sometimes. hopefully you are doing better now? FB
 
That was a little while ago; everything is healed now.

Post surgery, my jaw was sore, but it was not any kind of disabling pain (no need for any pain medication, just cold packs). The soreness took several days to go away. It was actually somewhat useful, in that I knew to avoid chewy foods etc. for several days, which may have reduced the risk of dry socket or other complications (I had no complications).

I wonder if the dry sockets and other complications that people often complain about after tooth extractions could be due to people being loaded up on narcotics and blithely going back to a normal diet including chewy foods (not noticing the soreness telling them not to chew aggressively), and thus damaging or irritating the extraction site before it is healed.

Then again, I have also noticed that people reach for the aspirin, acetaminophen, or ibuprofin at the slightest hint of a fever, instead of realizing that the fever is part of their body's immune response to kill off whatever infection is bothering them. Of course, if the fever gets too high, it could be dangerous, but most fevers do not get that high.
 
You don't have to get them all filled when they are on the same paper. My asthma doc puts all mine on the same one and I just tell the pharmacy which one I want at the time.
 
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