| The pain physician is faced with unusual problems because of the opioid medications used to treat patients. These drugs are subject to non-compliance, diversion, and abuse. Urine drug testing is one of the tools utilized to document that these drugs are used properly. The laboratory results of this testing must meet high standards of reliability so that the physician is confident in their discussion with the patients. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) has been shown to give superior clinical service than the traditional method of gas chromatography for analysis of drugs in urine samples. This is due to several reasons: 1) LC-MS/MS ability to better distinguish between the significant number of drugs that pain patients take without interferences from other substances, making the clinical test report more complete; 2) the very low quantity of urine required to obtain results, making obtaining patient specimens easier. |
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