prescription opioids

BACKGROUND: Partial-thickness skin wounds are some of the most painful injuries due to large areas of exposed nerve endings. These injuries often require systemic opioid treatments to manage pain adequately. However, in 2021 alone, the CDC reported nearly 17,000 prescription opioid-related deaths in the USA, highlighting the ongoing need for non-opioid treatment strategies. In this manuscript, we developed a novel single-application ropivacaine-eluting primary wound dressing that could provide sustained ropivacaine delivery to partial-thickness wounds and assessed its in vivo feasibility for prolonged non-opioid analgesia...

BACKGROUND: Opioid use after revision total hip arthroplasty (rTHA) has not been well characterized. The purpose of this study was to characterize preoperative, perioperative, and postoperative opioid use during rTHA. METHODS: Patients undergoing revision THA from 2010 to 2018 were screened for opioid use 3 months before revision surgery and tracked 24 months postoperatively. Patients were categorized as naïve or tolerant. Opioid prescriptions and average morphine milligram equivalents (MME) were compared between the two groups...

ISSUES: To date, there has been no synthesis of research addressing the scale and nuances of the opioid epidemic in racial/ethnic minority populations in the United States that considers the independent and joint impacts of dynamics such as structural disadvantage, provider bias, health literacy, cultural norms and various other risk factors. APPROACH: Using the "risk environment" framework, we conducted a scoping review on PubMed, Embase and Google Scholar of peer-reviewed literature and governmental reports published between January 2000 and February 2024 on the nature and scale of opioid use, opioid prescribing patterns, and fatal overdoses among racial/ethnic minorities in the United States, while also examining macro, meso and individual-level risk factors...

Long-term and high-dose prescription opioid use places individuals at risk for opioid misuse, opioid use disorder (OUD), and overdose. Existing methods for monitoring opioid use and detecting misuse rely on self-reports, which are prone to reporting bias, and toxicology testing, which may be infeasible in outpatient settings. Although wearable technologies for monitoring day-to-day health metrics have gained significant traction in recent years due to their ease of use, flexibility, and advancements in sensor technology, their application within the opioid use space remains underexplored...

It is estimated that chronic neuropathic pain conditions exhibit up to 10% prevalence in the general population, with increased incidence in females. However, nonsteroidal inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are ineffective, and currently indicated prescription treatments such as opioids, anticonvulsants, and antidepressants provide only limited therapeutic benefit. In the current work, we extended previous studies in male rats utilizing a paradigm of central Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4)-dependent, NSAID-unresponsive neuropathic-like pain hypersensitivity to male and female C57BL/6N mice, uncovering an unexpected hyperalgesic phenotype in female mice following intrathecal (IT) LPS...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Legal regulations for dispensing in Swiss heroin-assisted treatment were relaxed during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing prolonged take-home of up to 7 days instead of two to reduce patient contact and the risk of infection. Our study aimed to measure the consequences of this new practice. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: This was a retrospective cohort study set in Switzerland's largest outpatient centre for opioid agonist therapy. One hundred and thirty-four (72...

BACKGROUND: Clinicians and public health professionals have allocated resources to curb opioid over-prescription and address psychological needs among patients with musculoskeletal pain. However, associations between psychological distress, risk of surgery, and opioid prescribing among those with hip pathologies remain unclear. METHODS: Using a retrospective cohort study design, we identified patients that were evaluated for hip pain from January 13, 2020 to October 27, 2021...

INTRODUCTION: Despite Medicaid's outsized role in delivering and financing medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD), little is known about the extent to which buprenorphine prescriber networks vary across Medicaid health plans, and whether network characteristics affect quality of treatment received. In this observational cross-sectional study, we used 2018-2019 Medicaid claims in Oregon to assess network variation in the numbers and types of buprenorphine prescribers, as well as the association of prescriber and network characteristics with quality of care...

Introduction Understanding the different opioid pain relief requirements between patients with upper limb fractures can be useful in forming specific evidence-based guidelines and balancing patient-clinician prescribing discussions with opioid stewardship. We investigated the predictors for opioid requirements in upper limb fractures. Methods We retrospectively investigated all upper limb fractures from the shoulder to the wrist treated at a major trauma center from January 2015 to January 2022. The data collected consisted of fracture location, demographics, comorbidities, and management options...

BACKGROUND: Long-acting injectable depot buprenorphine has become an important treatment option for the management of opioid dependence. However, little is known about patients' experiences of depot buprenorphine and its embodied effects. This qualitative study aims to explore patients' experiences of depot buprenorphine treatment, including how it feels within the body, experiences of dosing cycles across time, and how this form of treatment relies on wider ecologies of care beyond the clinical encounter...

BACKGROUND: The Veterans Health Administration (VA) implemented academic detailing (AD) to support safer opioid prescribing and overdose prevention initiatives. METHODS: Patient-level data were extracted monthly from VA's electronic health record to evaluate whether AD implementation was associated with changes in all-cause mortality, opioid poisoning inpatient admissions, and opioid poisoning emergency department (ED) visits in an observational cohort of patients with long-term opioid prescriptions (≥45-day supply of opioids 6 months prior to a given month with ≤15 days between prescriptions)...

In this case report, we present an 82-year-old female who was diagnosed with catatonia after she exhibited immobility, mutism, withdrawal, and stereotypy during a hospitalization for altered mental status. Fentanyl was found in her urine toxicology, and it was later discovered that she had been taking non-prescription pills from Mexico that were likely the source of the fentanyl. Her catatonia quickly remitted with benzodiazepine treatment. This case underscores previously unknown risks of substance use, which has grown especially important to psychiatric care considering how rampant the opioid epidemic has become...

BACKGROUND: Overuse of medical care is a pervasive problem. Studies using hypothetical scenarios suggest that physicians' risk literacy influences medical decisions; real-world correlations, however, are lacking. We sought to determine the association between physicians' risk literacy and their real-world prescriptions of potentially hazardous drugs, accounting for conflicts of interest and perceptions of benefit-harm ratios in low-value prescribing scenarios. SETTING AND SAMPLE: Cross-sectional study-conducted online between June and October 2023 via field panels of Sermo (Hamburg, Germany)-with a convenience sample of 304 English general practitioners (GPs)...

INTRODUCTION: Physical restraint (PR) is prescribed in patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation in the intensive care unit (ICU) to avoid unplanned removal of medical devices. However, it is associated with an increased risk of delirium. We hypothesise that a restrictive use of PR, as compared with a systematic use, could reduce the duration of delirium in ICU patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The Restrictive use of Restraints and Delirium Duration in ICU (R2D2-ICU) study is a national multicentric, parallel-group, randomised (1:1) open-label, controlled, superiority trial, which will be conducted in 10 ICUs...

BACKGROUND: Opioid overdose was declared a public health emergency in the United States, but much of the focus has been on adults. Child and adolescent exposure and access to unused prescription-opioid medications is a big concern. More research is needed on the trend of pediatric (age 0-17) prescription-opioid overdose emergency department (ED) visits in the United States, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic year. METHODS: This retrospective epidemiological study used the 2008-2020 Nationwide Emergency Department Sample to provide a national estimate of ED visits related to prescription-opioid overdose...

BACKGROUND: In England and Wales coroners have a duty to write a report, called a Prevention of Future Deaths report or PFD, when they believe that actions should be taken to prevent future deaths. Coroners send PFDs to individuals and organisations who are required to respond within 56 days. Despite the increase in mental health concerns and growing use of medicines, deaths reported by coroners that have involved medicine-related suicides had not yet been explored. Therefore, this study aimed to systematically assess coroners' PFD reports involving suicides in which a medicine caused or contributed to the death to identify lessons for suicide prevention...

Background: Headache is a debilitating complication following an aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). Despite its impact on morbidity and quality of life, limited evidence characterizes the effectiveness of opioids. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate opioid associated reduction in pain scores in patients with aSAH-associated headache. Methods: This is a retrospective study of adult patients with an aSAH, Hunt and Hess grades I - III, admitted to a neurosciences intensive care unit. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to characterize headache treatment strategies and opioid associated reduction in pain scores...

BACKGROUND: There have been sharp increases in antidepressant and opioid prescriptions over the last 10 years, as well as increased over-the-counter medicine availability. However, the impact on childhood medicinal poisonings rates, particularly by socioeconomic deprivation is unclear. This study reports population level medicinal poisoning substance patterns in England among children aged 0-11 years, helping inform safety advice and poisoning prevention interventions. METHODS: An open cohort study of 1,489,620 0-11 year olds was conducted from 1998 to 2018, using the Clinical Practice Research Datalink, to examine inpatient hospital admissions for poisoning...

BACKGROUND: Hospital length-of-stay and admission frequency are commonly used indicators of disease burden and health resource expenditures. However, the impact of psychoactive prescription medication use and harmful alcohol consumption on both the duration and frequency of hospital admissions is under-explored. METHODS: We conducted an analysis of data gathered from 2872 patients admitted to the Emergency Department at Lovisenberg Diaconal Hospital in Oslo, Norway...

OBJECTIVE: The Opioid and Naloxone Education (ONE) Program focuses on community pharmacy-based patient screening and interventions to improve population health with regard to opioid use. The purpose of this paper is to reevaluate the ONE Program performance using the RE-AIM model, in comparison to the review performed in 2019. METHODS: The program performance of the ONE Program was evaluated from January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2022 was evaluated using the five domains of the RE-AIM model...