More and more Americans with chronic pain are taking medically prescribed opioids like Oxycontin and Vicodin. In a study published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the risk of overdose in these patients is examined. The study connects the risk of fatal and non-fatal opioid overdose to prescription use – strongly associated the risk with the prescribed dose of the drug.
Almost 10,000 patients who received multiple opioid prescriptions for back pain and osteoarthritis. Patients who received higher doses were nine times more likely to overdose than were those patients receiving low doses of the drugs. Most of the overdoses happened with patients receiving low to medium doses, because prescriptions at those levels were much more common.
More than 8 million adults in this country are using opioids on a long term basis for chronic pain. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that almost 14,000 deaths in 2006 involved prescription opioids. That figure is more than three times the amount of deaths reported in 1999. Between 1999 and 2006, almost 65,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States were reported to involve opioids.
"Some studies have indicated that fatal opioid overdoses occur most often among people abusing prescription drugs or obtaining them from non-medical sources," said Dr. Michael Von korff, who led the study. "But our results suggest that many overdoses may occur among people using prescribed opioids."
Van Korff said his research cannot determine whether higher doses are a cause of overdose, but he noted that physicians should carefully evaluate and closely monitor patients using these drugs on a long-term basis.
If you or someone you love is struggling with an addiction to prescription medications, Our Pain Management Track can help.
