Why would a pain management doctor?
Thursday, September 9th, 2010 at
5:18 pm
Take some off the Fentynal patch 12mcg and put them on Methadone 2.5mg twice daily if the patch wasn't helping with the persons pain?
Wouldn't that be less pain medication?
Tagged with: fentynal patch • medication • methadone • pain medication
Filed under: Pain Management
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The 12.5 mcg per hour fentanyl has an equivalent analgesic effect to approximately 2 mg of methadone per day. By taking 2.5 mg twice per day this essentially doubles the dose immediately. Secondly, due to the extremely long half-life elimination of methadone from the body, the medication accumulates in the body so that on the second day you have even more analgesic effect than the first day. Finally after 72 hours the body metabolizes the methadone in the system into another opiate substance which produces even more analgesic effect.
Due to the way methadone works you will need 2-4 mg to equal a 25 mcg fentanyl patch and probably get a similar effect.
In opiate pain medications you cannot compare the milligrams in the dose to the milligrams as each medication has it’s own potency.
Fentanyl is quite strong so it is dosed in micrograms (mcg) which equal of a 1/1000 milligram (mg)