pain hurts

NYTimes now finds some people without vioxx are hurting...and would take it despite the tiny increased risk of heart attack...but they still haven't figured this part out:In the meantime, patients and doctors are weighing the risks and benefits of this class of drugs - known as cox-2 inhibitors, or coxibs - which since 1999 has become enormously popular and profitable but has never been proved to be more effective than older drugs like ibuprofen, commonly sold as Advil or Motrin. Some patients say they respond better to one drug than another, old or new. But the coxibs were developed as alternatives to older anti-inflammatory drugs, which can cause ulcers

Yup. Our tiny clinic had an average of three GI bleeds a year from Motrin or similar "NSAIDS", and quite a few anemia/minor bleeing/stomach pain...the last patient we lost of this was a druggie with cirrhosis, who saw a different doc, who gave her an NSAID instead of a narcotic or a Cox A, and she bled to death from her esophogeal varices...

Of course, I've seen two GI bleeds from Cox A, both in people who had GI bleeds from NSAIDS...

And then we see narcotic abuse if we give them cheap tylenol 3 ...

Of course, they could take tylenol plain, which doesn't work very well, and you would need to take 12 a day instead of one Vioxx...

which none of my little old ladies will do, too many pills.