Successful use of buprenorphine-naloxone medication-assisted program to treat concurrent pain and opioid addiction after cancer therapy.

Successful use of buprenorphine-naloxone medication-assisted program to treat concurrent pain and opioid addiction after cancer therapy. J Opioid Manag. 2020 Mar/Apr;16(2):111-118 Authors: Moryl N, Filkins A, Griffo Y, Malhotra V, Jain RH, Frierson E, Inturrisi C Abstract Cancer pain is often treated with opioids, a therapeutic regimen that can become a challenge in patients with an opioid use disorder (OUD). While use of the buprenorphine-naloxone combination is an effective medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for OUD, its use in pain patients with OUD has been controversial due to concerns that co-administration of buprenorphine can reduce or block analge-sia and precipitate opioid withdrawal in those patients requiring full opioid agonists. Data on its use in cancer pain patients are lack-ing. In this case series, the authors explore the frequency of buprenorphine-naloxone use and its outcomes in patients in a Compre-hensive Care Center (CCC) Pain Registry. OUD was deduced from an International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) diagnostic code for opioid-related disorders recorded in the electronic medical records. Of 2,320 chronic cancer pain patients, 125 patients had ICD-10 code for opioid-related disorders, and 43 had a diagnosis of opioid abuse of whom 11 received buprenorphine-naloxone combina-tions. Eight patients on 18 (6-24) mg per day of buprenorphine-naloxone remained in therapy for 4 (2-7) years without opioid abuse ...
Source: Journal of Opioid Management - Category: Addiction Tags: J Opioid Manag Source Type: research