Assists Physicians to Monitor Pain Medications
Pain is the number one patient complaint affecting more than 50 million people in the U.S. Many of these patients are coming to clinicians requesting relief. Prescription analgesics are often needed to reduce pain and allow parallel interventions to succeed. Stories of fatalities due to adverse drug interactions raise concerns about patient safety.
Interpretive Report
The PtProtect report provides an “Interpretive Comment” section that allows physicians to quickly and accurately determine whether the test results are consistent or discrepant with patient prescription(s). Reports are based on prescribed medications and the analytical test results. We compare medications prescribed, medications detected and the ratio of metabolite to parent substance to facilitate understanding of the test data.
It is important when ordering tests to clearly communicate to the laboratory the pertinent clinical information about each patient. In the case of the PtProtect Pain Management Panels, any prescription pain medications and benzodiazepines taken by the chronic pain patient are crucial elements for an accurate interpretive report. Our PtProtect requisition makes it easier to provide this critical medication information.
The comprehensive interpretive report indicates when the drug detected is not anticipated as well as when a specific prescription narcotic or benzodiazepine is expected. The main purpose of the test is to detect the presence and quantity of the expected substance and provide information to reduce adverse drug interactions.
Specimen Type
For information on specimen types, click here.
More Information
To learn more about our testing read our physician update:
PtProtect Pain
Medication Management Program Monitors Patient Compliance
or visit http://www.ptprotect.com/
For details on services and fees or to schedule an inservice or appointment, call PeaceHealth Laboratories Drug Testing Client Services.
Improve Safety, Identify Risk
When treating chronic pain patients, PtProtect can help improve patient safety and identify patients at risk of abuse or misuse of prescription analgesics.
The PtProtect Pain Management Panels use sophisticated testing methods to detect 10 common drugs of abuse: stimulants, sedatives and hypnotics. For opiate and opioid testing, we use liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS), the most accurate and sensitive testing method available. Our data shows that up to 30% of drugs found by LC/MS/MS would have been missed using conventional immunoassay screens for opiates and opioids.
The PtProtect program is a comprehensive solution for pain management and includes:
- Online tools to identify and reduce patients at risk for abuse or misuse
- An easy-to-use requisition with a section to note recently taken pain medications
- Multiple panel choices with optional add-on tests for testing flexibility
- An objective report with interpretive comments that confirms patient compliance with medications prescribed
Detection Thresholds
To provide longer detection time after drug use, the detection limits of the PtProtect Pain Management Panels are set at thresholds appropriate for the class of drugs and are lower than the detection rates used by other laboratory testing panels. For drugs of abuse the threshold is 200 to 300 ng/mL except for marijuana and PCP at 20 and 25 ng/mL, respectively. For prescription pain medications, the threshold for opiates and opioids are 5 ng/mL except for fentanyl and its metabolite (norfentanyl) where the threshold is 2 ng/mL.