HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, June 6, 2022 (HealthDay Information) — This is a easy weapon to make use of towards the opioid epidemic: New analysis finds that inserting cut-off dates on prescriptions for extremely addictive narcotic painkillers could scale back the danger of misuse.
In 2019, 1% of opioid prescriptions from U.S. dentists and surgeons had been stuffed 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 workforce discovered.
Generalized to all surgical and opioid prescriptions in the USA, that share would translate into greater than 260,000 opioid prescriptions a 12 months which might be stuffed greater than a month after being written, in accordance with the research revealed 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 aside from meant by the prescriber,” mentioned lead research creator Dr. Kao-Ping Chua. He’s a pediatrician and member of the college’s Little one Well being Analysis and Analysis Middle and Institute for Healthcare Coverage and Innovation.
“These are each types of prescription opioid misuse, which in flip is a powerful danger issue for opioid overdose,” Chua defined in a college information launch.
State legal guidelines on expiration durations for managed substance prescriptions could also be partly guilty, in accordance with the researchers.
In 2019, 18 states permitted prescriptions for Schedule II opioids and different managed substances — these with the very best danger of misuse — to be stuffed as much as six months after writing, and one other eight states allowed these medication to be distributed as much as a 12 months after the prescription.
“It is perplexing that states would enable managed substance prescriptions to be stuffed so lengthy after they’re written,” Chua mentioned.
Tighter state legal guidelines might assist stop or scale back opioid abuse related to delayed filling of prescriptions, he recommended.
The researchers pointed to Minnesota, which had a pointy drop in delayed shelling out after it launched a legislation in July 2019 that prohibited opioid shelling out greater than 30 days after a prescription was written.
An alternative choice is for prescribers to incorporate directions on the prescription to not dispense opioids after a sure period of time, the research authors mentioned.
Extra info
There’s extra on prescription opioids on the U.S. Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse.
SOURCE: College of Michigan, information launch, June 1, 2022
