Study: Doctors, Dentists Continue To Prescribe Opioids To Young People At High Rates

(CNN) — The rates of opioid prescriptions remain high for adolescents and young adults in the US, with certain outpatient and emergency conditions frequently prompting the use of these medications, according to a new study. Researchers analyzed visits to emergency rooms and outpatient clinics for adolescents and young adults ages 13 to 22 between 2005 and 2015 using data from two national surveys conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over the 11-year study period there were more than 78,000 visits to emergency rooms and outpatient clinics, with 15% of ER visits and 3% of outpatient clinic visits resulting in an opioid prescription. The rate of opioid prescription in emergency rooms decreased by approximately 4% from 2005 to 2015, but did not change significantly in outpatient clinics, according to the results published Tuesday in the journal Pediatrics. “To be frank, these were numbers that surprised us a little bit with how high those numbers were,” said Dr. Joel Hudgins, clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital and lead author of the study. Since 2015, the last year of data included in the new study, Hudgins said opioid prescription rates may be continuing to go down in emergency rooms, although slowly. Some conditions prompted an opioid prescription more often than others. For teens, visits for dental disorders resulted in a prescripti...
Source: WBZ-TV - Breaking News, Weather and Sports for Boston, Worcester and New Hampshire - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Health News CNN opioids Source Type: news