Tapentadol

[carol1964]

Phoned GP today to ask if I could try tapentadol, she said she would have to look into it as she'd never heard of it and didn't no if it was licensed,she said maybe a consultant could prescribe it,anyone tried it or know anything about it?

[Hidden]

Hi Carol, I have been on Tapentadol for 12 months now and only have one issue with it, I have very low blood pressure, Tapentadol makes it significantly worse, so I can only take 50mgs twice a day, when I tried to increase it to 100mgs,my blood pressure was so low I couldn't stand up, I got admitted to hospital for monitoring,when the drug wore off I was absolutely fine. Apart from that no nausea or constipation at this dose. You can take up to 500mgs at a time apparently ! The best bit is it does help with the pain,along with everything else I take. I hope your G.P will let you try it, and it is licensed for pain relief.

[carol1964 in reply to Hidden]

Thanks for your advice x

[earthwitch]

This isn't a med that you take "as needed" - its one that is a slow release formulation that covers you 24 hours round the clock. It is therefore only indicated if immediate release meds don't work sufficiently well, and you need 24 hour pain relief. Given that all strong pain meds do affect your ability to concentrate to some extent, you would need to seriously consider whether it was more important to you to keep fully alert, or to dull your pain constantly, and also whether you preferred to have the same constant level of pain meds in your body, or it worked better for you to be able to take pain meds "as needed".

I probably wouldn't be surprised if a GP didn't want to prescribe it without a consultants request because there are a lot of other meds that could be tried first. Have you considered asking to see a pain medicine specialist? One good thing about seeing a pain specialist is that they may come up with better options you didn't know about or hadn't considered.