Don't forget to floss . . . and take your drugs

An MD friend is a substance abuse counselor here in Massachusetts.  She reported to me that a substantial percentage of her clients have been able to maintain their addiction through supplies of opiates prescribed by dentists. In all the recent talk about excessive use of opiates, I had never heard about this source.So I wondered if there has been any study of this by the profession or coverage of this issue by the media.  After a search, I found this 2010 report from the Tufts Health Care Institute Program on Opioid Risk Management.  Excerpts:The top specialty prescribing IR [immediate release] opioids in the United States is family practice (approximately 15% of prescriptions written), but this is closely followed by dentistry and internal medicine (both approximately 12% of prescriptions). It is estimated that more than 12 billion dosage units of opioids are dispensed annually in the United States. If dentists write 12% of prescriptions, they prescribe an estimated 1 to 1.5 billion doses of IR opioid products annually. As the epidemic of abuse largely involves IR opioid products, it seems that dentists may be writing opioid prescriptions that are being ingested in the context of nonmedical use or abuse.When asked about doses of IR opioids that dentists suspect patients have left after a third molar extraction, 36% of dentists expect patients to have leftover drugs, which could be a major source for abuse. Other common procedures showed a similar patt...
Source: Running a hospital - Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs