HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, June 6, 2022 (HealthDay Information) — Here is a easy weapon to make use of in opposition to the opioid epidemic: New analysis finds that inserting deadlines on prescriptions for extremely addictive narcotic painkillers might cut back the danger of misuse.
In 2019, 1% of opioid prescriptions from U.S. dentists and surgeons had 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 crew discovered.
Generalized to all surgical and opioid prescriptions in america, that proportion would translate into greater than 260,000 opioid prescriptions a yr which are crammed greater than a month after being written, in response to the research printed on-line not too long ago in JAMA Community Open .
“Our findings counsel that some sufferers use opioids from surgeons and dentists for a motive or throughout a time-frame apart from meant by the prescriber,” mentioned lead research creator 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 powerful danger 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 guilty, in response to the researchers.
In 2019, 18 states permitted prescriptions for Schedule II opioids and different managed substances — these with the best danger of misuse — to be crammed as much as six months after writing, and one other eight states allowed these medicine to be allotted as much as a yr 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 advised.
The researchers pointed to Minnesota, which had a pointy drop in delayed allotting after it launched a regulation in July 2019 that prohibited opioid allotting 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
