North Jersey Hospital Finds New Ways To Treat Pain Without Opiates

One North Jersey medical center is pioneering a way of combatting the ever-increasing opiate addiction epidemic in the area.

The groundbreaking Alternatives to Opiates (ALTO) program at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson is demonstrating that most patients can be successfully treated for pain relief without the use of opiates.

Often people who begin taking opiates have difficulty stopping. Once their prescription has run out, many turn to heroin or other street drugs to get the same high.

Related: Everyone who has died of a heroin- or prescription opioid-related overdose in N.J. since 2004

The number of heroin users getting high in public and dying throughout North Jersey is increasing as a result. More than 5,200 New Jersey residents have reportedly died from heroin overdoses since 2004.

Patients needing pain-reduction treatment are treated in the medical center’s emergency room not with opiates, but with alternative medications and therapy.

Related: Why Are More Heroin Users Getting High In Public?

For years, physicians have had three options with regards to pain relief: Tylenol, Advil, and opiates.

“Our goal is to add more tools to the toolbox, so to speak,” said Dr. Mark Rosenberg, chairman of emergency medicine with the St. Joseph’s Healthcare System. “The public was, at first, concerned that we weren’t going to be able to manage their pain, but they’ve found that we can control their pain better than if we prescribed opiates.”

Rather than prescribe an opiate like Oxycodone, which simply dull and numb one’s senses, physicians will now try and eliminate the pain at the source first.

“We attack the pain exactly where it is,” Rosenberg said.

Laughing gas was also used to help a child who hurt his arm in a hoverboard accident. Instead of giving the child a pain-reducer, doctors gave him laughing gas. The child was able to play with a toy the entire time he received treatment.

“It’s the way it needs to be,” Rosenberg said.

Of the first 500 patients who were prescribed alternative treatments, 75 percent, or 375 people, did not need opiates. And the 125 who did were given the lowest possible dose and only after an alternative treatment was tried first.

The hospital follows up with those people when they are moved to another department or discharged from the hospital and their primary care physicians are contacted.

“If I never give an opiate to someone, that person will never become an addict,” Rosenberg said.

Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey applauds the new program.

“This is what we’ve needed for a long time,” said Angelo Valente, executive director of the non-profit. “We see so many people become addicts and if the choice of whether or not to take them is taken away, we’ll have a lot fewer addicts out there.”

Email: daniel.hubbard@patch.com. Sign up for Patch N.J. email newsletters here.

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