The trial of a doctor and his wife accused of contributing to the fatal overdoses of 68 patients by overprescribing pain medication went to jurors on Tuesday.

Stephen Schneider and his wife Linda were portrayed by the prosecution in closing arguments as running a “Burger King for pain pill addicts” while the defense argued that the state’s case was overblown.

It case has drawn attention in part because of a debate over the medical treatment of pain in the United States, but also the high number of deaths attributed to the defendants.

“This is a sordid tale of how money and not medicine controlled the defendants’ actions,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway told jurors in closing arguments.

“The defendants were running a pill mill, not a legitimate medical practice,” she added.

But defense attorneys said the case was pushed by insurance companies who didn’t want to pay for expensive medication that Dr. Schneider prescribed to poor people.

“This is a reimbursement case for insurance, at most,” Kevin Byers, the attorney for Linda Schneider, told jurors. He said the Schneiders’ practice had been “doctored up to look like a huge, rolling death machine.”

At least one patients’ advocacy group has voiced its support for Schneider, who is no longer practicing medicine.

The Schneiders are charged in federal court with illegally prescribing narcotics, health-care fraud and money laundering. They face up to life in prison if convicted.

The indictment against the couple alleges their actions contributed to the deaths of 68 patients.

Treadway recounted testimony about many of them Tuesday, detailing how they had failed drug screening tests, required increased dosages of medication, and suffered non-fatal overdoses before finally dying.

One patient was a stripper for whom Schneider prescribed drugs to relieve performance anxiety, Treadway said.

Many died within days of their last visit to Schneider’s clinic, she said. Schneider often saw more than 50 patients in a day at the clinic, which was located in Haysville, a small town south of Wichita in south-central Kansas.

The Schneiders did not receive money for the drugs their patients took, but they fraudulently billed insurance companies and the government for patient services, using the money to buy a Hummer and a home in Mexico overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Treadway said.

Byers conceded that the volume of patients seen by the Schneiders made for a “chaotic” practice. “I’m sure there were mistakes made,” he said. “That doesn’t make it criminal or an illegal enterprise.”

Technorati Tags: medical treatment of pain, pain medication, prescribed drugs, Wichita

The US Army’s surgeon general on Monday expressed concern about “over-medication” of soldiers returning from combat, saying the military is closely tracking how drugs are prescribed to troops.

The top medical officer in the army, Lieutenant General Eric Schoomaker, said the increasing use of prescription drugs for soldiers recovering from combat duty in Iraq or Afghanistan reflected a wider trend in the country to treat pain primarily through medication.

But he told reporters: “I can tell you that we are concerned about over-medication.”

The general said that “we’re very concerned about the panoply of drugs that are being used and the numbers of drugs that are being used.”

“We are monitoring it very, very closely,” he said.

Prescription orders for psychiatric and pain medicines for troops have increased dramatically since 2001, according to a Military Times report in March, with one in six service members on some form of psychiatric drug.

About 15 percent of soldiers said they had abused prescription drugs in the past month, according to a Pentagon survey carried out in 2008 and released in December.

Lawmakers have urged the military to examine a possible link between a rise in suicides among troops and the use and abuse of prescription drugs.

Schoomaker said he had led a review looking at prescription drugs and his task force had promoted alternatives to pain killers, including “yoga, meditation, acupuncture, movement therapy, lots of other ways of approaching pain management.”

The army surgeon general made his comments at a news conference in which the he and other officers took issue with a New York Times account of a center in Colorado set up to help soldiers recover from mental or physical wounds in combat.

The Times, citing interviews with soldiers and health care workers, described the “warrior transition unit” at Fort Carson and similar posts as “warehouses of despair, where damaged men and women are kept out of sight, fed a diet of prescription pills and treated harshly by noncommissioned officers.”

But Schoomaker said about 81 percent of all soldiers at the transition centers expressed satisfaction with their treatment and about 90 percent of the troops at the Fort Carson center said they were satisfied with the care they received.

“And even with 90 percent satisfaction you’re going to have some people with very complex problems that are not going to be in that satisfied group,” he said, referring to the Times report.

About 26 percent of the soldiers at the transition center in Fort Carson were on a prescribed narcotic, with a clinical pharmacist closely monitoring the prescriptions, Colonel Jimmie Keenan of the military hospital at Fort Carson, told reporters by telephone.

Technorati Tags: pain killers, pain management, prescription drugs, prescriptions monitoring

A lot of people across the world suffer from different sort of pain such as acute pain, severe or chronic pain. Perhaps each one of you might have realized pain in one form or the other. Sometimes you face migraine or back pain after a whole day stressful work; others may be having pain due to undergoing surgery, or joint pains due to arthritis.

In most cases, these pain become a part of their routine life and health largely. It hinders the growth and living of a person and therefore it becomes necessary to cope up with such pains. Fortunately, several approved medicines provide relief from pain daily - whether severe or acute it is.

1. Ultracet pain relief medication is the brand name for the combination of two drugs - tramadol (Ultram) and acetaminophen (Tylenol). It is an analgesic used for patients to relieve them of any sort of acute, moderate, or severe pain caused by any surgery or other types of pain.

2. Butalbital pain relief medication belongs to the group of medicines known as Barbiturates and has a composition that relieves pain and acts as a relaxant. It is commonly used for the treatment of migraine headaches.

3. Ultram pain relief medication is the brand name for tramadol. It is being used as a pain reliever for moderate to severe pain caused after any surgery or other types of pain.

In addition to these medicines, other drugs are also available. However, you should contact medical practitioner before carrying out any of the treatment - because their might have side effects in some circumstances.

Pain relief medications serve purposes such as relieving pain and inflammation, also increasing the quality of your life, reduces the progress of the disease, controls co-morbidity, and minimizes the risks of therapy.

Technorati Tags: butalbital, Pain Relief, pain relief medications, pain relief medicine, tramadol, ultracet, ultram