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You are here: Experts > Health/Fitness > Pharmacology > Pharmacy > Morphine Sulfate
Expert: Dr Alan Galbraith
Date: 3/3/2008
Subject: Morphine Sulfate
Question
I am concerned about my mother-in-law, 50 year old diagnosed with RA(Rheumatoid arthritis). She is currently seeing a physicians assistant for care and was prescribed 100 mg of Morphine 3x/day. This seems like such a high dosage for someone that is not in severe pain and now has absolutely no quality of life. Sometimes she is very difficult to arouse, hypotensive, confused, has amnesia and many other symptoms. She is also taking percocet, valium, and muscle relaxers. Also when my mother-in-law complained about the way the medication made her feel(overmedicated), the Morphine was stopped immediately and she had a reaction of emesis, diarrhea, chills, fever, and weakness. My question is, is this an appropriate dosage of Morphine for mild to moderate arthritis pain. Thank you for your time.
Answer
Dear Wendy
This seems a huge dose of morphine (and together with the Percocet and Valium I am not surprised about her quality of life. It is not normal to give an analgesic such as morphine even for severe arthritis pain as there are much better and less problematic drugs than morphine available. The symptoms you describe are typical withdrawal symptoms of the body being use to narcotics. For severe arthritic pain, narcotics are sometimes used but only when other drugs are not working or are contraindicated. Even then the initial dose would be a fraction of what your mother-in-law was prescribed. This type of dose should only be given to persons who ave become unresponsive to lower doses.
Let me know if you require more information.
Regards
Dr Alan Galbraith
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