Robert Whitfield MD explains how nerve blocks with Ropivacaine and Marcaine, plus hyperbaric oxygen and red light therapy, can cut post-op narcotic use. A person in recovery stresses that patients should tell their doctors about substance-use history so they don't get prescribed high-risk medications.
Not beyond the first week or so after surgery.
So we use different combinations like anesthesia, does specific nerve blocks with Ropivacane and then we do specific nerve blocks with a combination of, of basically regular Marcane and then liposomal. So the, the short answer is I don't do anything as I was taught. I do everything to avoid what you're describing, which is problems with post op. So it's almost universally unheard of for me to have people ask for more pain medicine. But you should not have people on short acting narcotics, you know, beyond, you know, the first week or so after a surgery that we're doing. So we don't see a lot of that behavior. It's very rare honestly, because we do so many multimodal things. And then obviously in my clinic we have hyperbaric oxygen lymphatic massage and red light therapy. I mean we do a lot of things that are, you know, from a anti inflammatory standpoint, very aggressive to promote recovery.
Because you know, how I help my patients also is I'm probably one of the, maybe there are like three, you know, in the country that are in recovery themselves and also do this as a practice. So I know both sides of the story. Therefore I really try to educate them and what we see most of the time they do not share that they're in recovery with the doctors that they're going. They don't tell you, they don't come to you and say, hey, I'm in recovery. If they're in early recovery and they're still, their mind is still in this tricky stage that oh, it would be so nice to have a couple of pills so that I can get high and it's going to be prescribed so I'm allowed to take them. And we really try to make them share that information from the get go from the first time they're meeting, hey, I cannot take this type of medications.
