Risk of Adverse Health Outcomes with Increasing Duration and Regularity of Opioid Therapy

Conclusions: Adverse health outcomes can increase with accumulating opioid use and increasing dosage. Existing guidelines developed by specialty societies for managing patients using opioids daily or nearly daily do not address the larger number of patients who use opioids intermittently over periods of years. Practitioners should consider applying such guidelines to patients who use opioids less frequently.
Source: Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine - Category: Primary Care Authors: Tags: Original Research Source Type: research