Setting Time Limits on Opioid Prescriptions May Cut back Misuse

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 putting cut-off dates on prescriptions for extremely addictive narcotic painkillers might scale back the chance 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 workforce discovered.

Generalized to all surgical and opioid prescriptions in the US, that proportion would translate into greater than 260,000 opioid prescriptions a yr which might be crammed greater than a month after being written, in response to the examine revealed on-line just lately in JAMA Community Open .

“Our findings counsel that some sufferers use opioids from surgeons and dentists for a motive or throughout a timeframe aside from supposed by the prescriber,” stated lead examine creator Dr. Kao-Ping Chua. He’s a pediatrician and member of the college’s Youngster 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 powerful threat 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 responsible, in response to the researchers.

In 2019, 18 states permitted prescriptions for Schedule II opioids and different managed substances — these with the 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 yr 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 might assist forestall 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 allotting after it launched a legislation in July 2019 that prohibited opioid allotting greater than 30 days after a prescription was written.

Another 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 data

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