Setting Time Limits on Opioid Prescriptions Might Reduce Misuse

MONDAY, June 6, 2022 (HealthDay Information) — Here is a easy weapon to make use of towards the opioid epidemic: New analysis finds that inserting closing dates on prescriptions for extremely addictive narcotic painkillers could scale 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 keeping 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 purpose or throughout a time-frame apart from supposed by the prescriber,” stated lead examine writer 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 robust threat 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 keeping 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 allotted 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 stated.

Tighter state legal guidelines may 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 examine authors stated.

Extra info

There’s extra on prescription opioids on the U.S. Nationwide Institute on Drug Abuse.