Pain affects more people in the United States than diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined. Between 50 million and 100 million adults in the United States have chronic pain conditions, according to estimates from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.

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But a failure to differentiate between chronic and acute pain can lead to all such complaints being treated as acute cases, often with unnecessary opioids prescribed — action that has helped fuel the nation’s opioid crisis.

It’s why two University of Michigan researchers say the health care industry must make systemic changes to properly care for patients with chronic pain.

“Opioids get a lot of attention from both patients and physicians, and they distract from what we really should be doing to manage chronic pain,” says Daniel Clauw, M.D., director of Michigan Medicine’s Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center.

“Opioids were a class of drugs that were never really shown to work for chronic pain and never really should have been used for chronic pain.”

Although such drugs may provide temporary relief, the aftereffects can be severe.

The tendency for physicians to prescribe — and sometimes overprescribe — opioids has left many Americans dependent on the drugs. A 2016 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that as many as 1 in 4 people who receive prescription opioids long term for non-cancer-related pain subsequently struggle with addiction or misuse.