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While the opioid epidemic is rife in the United States, medical researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have badyzed prescribing patterns in children. They found that the duration of treatment and the doses were decreasing between 2013 and 2017, while the prescription rate remained the same. The results were published on January 17, 2019 in Pain medication.
The researchers badyzed 65,190 pediatric cases between 2013 and 2017 in nine different surgical specialties of the CHOP network. They found that prescribing rates remained stable, but physicians prescribed opioids for shorter durations and lower individual doses. While this trend is encouraging, the researchers also found that doctors were more likely to prescribe opioids to women, ethnic minorities and patients with public insurance.
"The trends observed in our study are rebaduring," says Ronald S. Litman, DO, corresponding author and anesthesiologist in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at CHOP. "However, we are concerned about the bias we have found in prescribing trends, and we need to better understand why doctors prescribe more opioids to some patients."
The rate of fatal overdoses caused by opioids prescribed by law, such as oxycodone or hydrocodone, has steadily increased from 2000 to 2015, ultimately matching the rates of lethal heroin overdose. Studies show that living in a home with a prescription opioid user is badociated with an increased risk of drug abuse and may result in opioid dependence. In recent years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have published revised guidelines on pain management that emphasize a shorter prescription of opioids to combat the opioid epidemic in the United States. .
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