In Palliative Medicine Morphine Kills Pain, Not Patients

Many people, including health care workers, believe that morphine is a lethal drug that causes death when used to control pain for a patient who is dying. That is a misconception according to new research published in the latest issue of Palliative Medicine, from SAGE Publications.

Two articles in the peer-reviewed journal address research led by Professor Bassam Estfan of The Taussig Cancer Center in which patients in a specialist palliative care in-patient unit with severe cancer pain were treated with morphine, a type of opioid. Their vital statistics were monitored before and after the pain was controlled and there were no significant changes. Morphine did not cause respiratory depression, the mechanism by which lethal opioid overdose typically kills.

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