Safety and Efficacy Study of Hydromorphone and Morphine

There is widespread agreement that pain is under-treated in the Emergency Department (ED). The current recommended treatment of acute pain in the ED setting is administration of an initial bolus of morphine followed by titration until adequate analgesia is achieved. Several studies have shown that even 0.1 mg/kg IV morphine (7-10 mg administered to the average 70-100 kg patient) inadequately treats many patients' acute pain. In spite of this, it has been observed that many emergency physicians and nurses are hesitant to give 7-10 mg of morphine as an initial IV dose. In contrast, it has been observed that these same healthcare providers were not similarly reluctant to administer a roughly equianalgesic dose of hydromorphone (1-1.5 mg), perhaps because the more potent hydromorphone is given in much smaller milligram quantities than morphine, thus providing the illusion of substantially less opioid administered to the patient. Having repeatedly observed this phenomenon, it is reasonable that if a smaller milligram dose of hydromorphone were shown to provide an efficacy, safety, and side-effect profile comparable or superior to a larger milligram dose of morphine, it would provide evidence supporting use of hydromorphone as an alternative first line opioid in the treatment of acute pain presenting to the ED. As a practical corollary to this, it is reasoned further that the increased willingness of healthcare providers to use hydromorphone might contribute to reducing one component of the multifaceted problem of oligoanalgesia in the ED.