Minorities less likely to get pain relief-US study

CHICAGO, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Black and Hispanic patients in pain are less likely than whites to get powerful painkillers from U.S. hospital emergency departments, but the reasons may go beyond sheer racial bias, researchers said on Tuesday.

In a look at 375,000 emergency room visits over 13 years, a study found 31 percent of whites in pain received opioid drugs

-- a broad class of narcotic painkillers dispensed only by -- a broad class of narcotic painkillers dispensed only by prescription -- compared to 23 percent of blacks and 24 percent of Hispanics.

In contrast, 36 percent of minority patients received less-potent, non-opioid pain relievers such as acetaminophen and ibuprofen during emergency room visits, compared to 26 percent of white patients.

There may several reasons behind the racial disparity, Dr. Mark Pletcher, the study's author, wrote in this week's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Pain relief received more attention in the late 1990s, and formal U.S. guidelines issued in 2001 called for improved monitoring and control of patient pain. Overall, use of opioids in hospital emergency departments increased from 23 percent of patients in 1993 to 37 percent in 2005, the researchers said.

"Studies in the 1990s showed a disturbing racial or ethnic disparity in the use of these potent pain relievers, but we had hoped that the recent national efforts at improving pain management in emergency departments would shrink this disparity," Pletcher, of the University of California at San Francisco, said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, this is not the case," he said.