CDC Releases Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a guideline for clinicians who are prescribing opioids for chronic pain that is not associated with cancer, palliative care, or end-of-life care. The guideline is intended to ensure that clinicians and patients consider safer and more effective treatment options for pain management, improve patient outcomes, and reduce the number of people who develop opioid use disorder, overdose, or experience other adverse events related to these drugs.“The new guideline really points out the dangers of the liberal prescribing of opioids,” said Petros Levounis, M.D, M.A., an addiction expert and chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. “Addiction psychiatry has been at the forefront of the fight against the opioid epidemic for at least 10 years now, from preventing the initiation of opioids to supporting the use of treatment for opioid addiction with FDA-approved medicines such as buprenorphine,” he told Psychiatric News.The guideline includes 12 recommendations, which address when to initiate or continue opioids for chronic pain; opioid selection, dosage, duration, follow-up, and discontinuation; and assessing risk and addressing harms of opioid use: Nonpharmacologic (e.g., physical therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy) and non-opioid therapies (e.g., NSAIDs, acetaminophen) are preferred for chronic pain. The CDC recommends that clinicians should consider opioid therapy only if...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: addiction Centers for Disease Control and Prevention opioid overdose prescription drug abuse primary care Source Type: research