HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, June 6, 2022 (HealthDay Information) — This is a easy weapon to make use of in opposition to the opioid epidemic: New analysis finds that putting deadlines on prescriptions for extremely addictive narcotic painkillers might cut back the chance of misuse.
In 2019, 1% of opioid prescriptions from U.S. dentists and surgeons have been crammed greater than 30 days after being issued, lengthy after the acute ache meant to be handled by the prescriptions ought to have subsided, the College of Michigan analysis group discovered.
Generalized to all surgical and opioid prescriptions in the US, that share would translate into greater than 260,000 opioid prescriptions a 12 months which might be crammed greater than a month after being written, in accordance with the examine printed on-line lately in JAMA Community Open .
“Our findings counsel that some sufferers use opioids from surgeons and dentists for a cause or throughout a time-frame apart from supposed by the prescriber,” mentioned lead examine writer Dr. Kao-Ping Chua. He’s a pediatrician and member of the college’s Baby Well being Analysis and Analysis Heart and Institute for Healthcare Coverage and Innovation.
“These are each types of prescription opioid misuse, which in flip is a robust threat issue for opioid overdose,” Chua defined in a college information launch.
State legal guidelines on expiration intervals for managed substance prescriptions could also be partly in charge, in accordance with the researchers.
In 2019, 18 states permitted prescriptions for Schedule II opioids and different managed substances — these with the very best threat of misuse — to be crammed as much as six months after writing, and one other eight states allowed these medicine to be distributed as much as a 12 months after the prescription.
“It is perplexing that states would permit managed substance prescriptions to be crammed so lengthy after they’re written,” Chua mentioned.
Tighter state legal guidelines may assist stop or cut back opioid abuse related to delayed filling of prescriptions, he instructed.
The researchers pointed to Minnesota, which had a pointy drop in delayed shelling out after it launched a regulation in July 2019 that prohibited opioid shelling out greater than 30 days after a prescription was written.
Another choice is for prescribers to incorporate directions on the prescription to not dispense opioids after a sure period of time, the examine authors mentioned.
Extra data
There’s extra on prescription opioids on the U.S. Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse.
SOURCE: College of Michigan, information launch, June 1, 2022
