Patients In Emergency Departments Are Less Likely To Receive Pain Medication If They Are Elderly

A new study finds that people 75 years old or older are less likely to receive any pain medication in hospital emergency departments than middle aged people - those between 35 and 54 years old.

And these differences remained even after researchers took into account how much pain the patients were having, said Timothy F. Platts-Mills, MD, lead author of the study and assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.