[Navigating between opiophobia and opiocentrism in today's healthcare]

Opioids are an essential category of medicines, and opiophobia should therefore be shunned. However, it is also important to avoid opiocentrism, i.e., the phenomenon of giving an unduly central place to opioids in the practice of pain medicine. To find a way between these two extremes, it is essential to do a thorough pain assessment and a risk analysis. In this paper, the question of how to best prescribe opioids is related to a "Pain Analysis 3×3" framework in which 3 areas, each consisting of 3 points, are discussed: 1) Is the pain acute, chronic, or cancer-related? 2) Is the pain nociceptive, neuropathic, or nociplastic? 3) Have biological, psychological and social/contextual aspects been taken into consideration (the bio-psycho-social model of pain)? Chronic nociplastic pain conditions such as e.g. fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome or "unspecific" back pain are generally unsuitable for treatment with opioids.