Here's a simple weapon to employ against the opioid epidemic: New research finds that placing time limits on prescriptions for highly addictive narcotic painkillers may reduce the risk of misuse.
In 2019, 1% of opioid prescriptions from U.S. dentists and surgeons were filled more than 30 days after being issued, long after the acute pain meant to be treated by the prescriptions should have subsided, the University of Michigan research team found.
Generalized to all surgical and opioid prescriptions in the United States, that percentage would translate into more than 260,000 opioid prescriptions a year that are filled more than a month after being written, according to the study published online recently in JAMA Network Open.
"Our findings suggest that some patients use opioids from surgeons and dentists for a reason or during a time frame other than intended by the prescriber," said lead study author Dr. Kao-Ping Chua. He is a pediatrician and member of the university's Child Health Evaluation and Research Center and Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.
Many young sarcoma patients continue using opioids after treatment