Zohydro is certainly not a perfect pain drug.
So what are the real risks and benefits of Zohydro?
(Zohydro comes in five different doses ranging from 10 to 50 milligrams.).
The highest strength of Zohydro is roughly half that of the highest strength OxyContin
and extended-release morphines.
In an April 3 interview with TIME magazine, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg,
said,“It's been said that Zohydro is super-potent.
As Walsh went on to note in her email,“There are many misperceptions about the potency of Zohydro in the press.”.
Judge Zobel faces a difficult decision but not because Zohydro, as many media reports have said, is more
potent than anything else on the market.
For better or worse, the FDA, after a long 2013 review, and against the vote of its own advisory committee,
did approve Zohydro in October of last year.
That surprises me because the highest dosage unit of Zohydro extended release is lower than the highest
dosage unit of all the other available extended release products on a milligram basis.
First of all, she stressed that the FDA approved Zohydro because it is a“new option for the management of pain
severe enough to require daily, around-the-clock, long-term treatment and for which alternative treatments… are inadequate.”.
But, he says, Zohydro and the other super painkillers should only
be used for a limited time and only for those patients who can follow their doctors' directions and who are psychologically stable, ie, not prone to addiction.