Even short-term opioid use can set people up for addiction risks | Science News

Even though a sprained ankle rarely needs an opioid, a new study of emergency room patients found that about 7 percent of patients got sent home with a prescription for the potentially addictive painkiller anyway. And the more pills prescribed, the greater the chance the prescription would be refilled, raising concerns about continued use.The research adds to evidence that it's hard for some people to stop taking the pills even after a brief use. State officials in New Jersey recently enacted a law limiting first-time prescriptions to a five-day supply, and other states should consider similar restrictions, says Kit Delgado, an assistant professor of Emergency Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania."The bottom line is that we need to do our best not to expose people to opioids," Delgado says."And if we do, start with the smallest quantity possible." The research was presented May 17 at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine's annual meeting in Orlando.Previous research has found that the more opioids such as hydrocodone and oxycodone are prescribed, the more likely patients are to keep taking them. But previous studies have been too broad to account for differences in diagnoses — for instance, whether people who received refills kept taking the drug simply because they still were in pain, Delgado says. He and colleagues limited their study to prescriptions written after ankle sprains to people who had not used an opioid ...
Source: Psychology of Pain - Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: blogs