PRESCRIBING higher doses of potentially addictive pain relief drugs for shorter periods after surgery could be an effective way to tackle pain and the future risk of addiction and misuse, research suggests.
Guidelines recommend opiods, which are drugs that act on the nervous system to relieve pain, should be taken in low doses for a short time.
A team of US researchers, led by Gabriel Brat at Harvard Medical School in Boston, looked at the link between opioid repeat prescriptions after surgery and misuse stating “surgeons and non-surgeons are changing the characteristics of their opioid prescriptions, but rates of misuse continue to increase”.
Their analysis, in the BMJ, found overall rates of misuse were low but seemed to increase with each opioid prescription refill.
They pinpointed just over one million commercially insured US patients without a history of misuse or ongoing opioid use problem who had routine surgery between 2008 and 2016.
Using administrative information they tracked prescription refills for oral opioids and looked at dependence, abuse or overdose.
They found 568,612 patients had been given prescriptions for post- operative opioids and 90 per cent were filled within three days of hospital discharge.
Misuse was spotted in 5,906 patients in the follow-ups that were carried out within about two-and-a-half years.
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