Skelaxin

Let’s talk about Skelaxin. You see it on the script pad all the time for acute back spasms, that post-injury muscular rigidity, but I find there’s a lot of confusion about where it really fits. It’s not a benzodiazepine, it’s not a direct-acting skeletal muscle relaxant like baclofen, and it sure isn’t an NSAID. For years, I just used it because it was on the formulary and patients sometimes reported benefit, but it wasn’t until I dug into the older literature and, more importantly, observed its effects in a specific subset of patients over the last decade that I developed a more nuanced view.