When Opioids Almost Kill You, Chances Are You'll Get More Opioids

I really wanted the first post of 2016 to be positive, uplifting, inspiring... but a study I read over the break was so unnerving, I had to go and ruin "return to work" day, already a day that lives in infamy, with even more depressing news.

Researchers at Boston Medical Center used a national database of prescription information to assess the likelihood of continued opioid prescriptions after a non-fatal overdose.  They looked at prescription information from 3,000 patients who experienced a non-fatal overdose between 2000 and 2012.  These patients were all prescribed opioids for chronic, non-cancer pain. 

Think about this: These 3,000 patients have already overdosed on prescription opioids. They are lucky to be alive. Surely, their healthcare providers will find another way, another mechanism, another approach to managing their pain. The risk here isn't illness or infection or a change in blood pressure... it's death.  

The bad news:

• Over 90% of these patients continued to receive opioids after their non-fatal overdose event
• 50% of these continued to receive the prescriptions from the same doctor
• 7% of the original group experienced a second overdose
• Two years after the first overdose, those with continuing opioid prescriptions were twice as likely to experience a second overdose event compared to those who were no longer receiving opioids. 

Why is this is happening?  

First, our fragmented healthcare system doesn't make it easy for prescribing physicians to discover the clinical events experienced by their patients outside of their immediate purview.  And patients may not want to disclose an overdose event for fear of having their medications discontinued.  I get that.  And it makes we wonder whether PDMPs should also include the ability for inpatient settings to report both fatal and non-fatal overdose events to the database so doctors can see this information whether its reported by the patient or not.  Linking electronic health records to PDMP systems would be a good start down this path.    

The second phenomenon driving these sorry statistics is that doctors are not comfortable weaning opioid (and other) medications.  No one, least of all me, would ever suggest immediate cessation of opioid therapy in light of a non-fatal overdose.  That's clinically irresponsible and potentially dangerous for the patient.  But the necessary steps forward are complicated: If the patient is on multiple medications that require weaning, which should we weaned first?  What titration steps should be used?  Is medication-assisted-therapy (MAT) an option?  Should I refer the patient or try to handle this myself?  These are hard questions and the primary care community, by far the most frequent prescribers of opioids, is currently ill-equipped to handle them.

Welcome to 2016.  Once more unto the breach, dear friends.  

Michael 

On Twitter @PRIUM1  

What Primary Care Docs Don't Know Can Hurt You

Caleb Alexander is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the co-director of school's Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness.  He and some of his colleagues decided to ask 1,000 primary care physicians about their beliefs and attitudes about opioids.  The results are both unsurprising and unsettling:

First, the good news:

• More than half of doctors recognize prescription drug abuse as a "big problem" in their community; 
• 90% strongly supported requiring patients to get opioids from a single doctor and single pharmacy; 
• Two-thirds supported the concept of physician-patient "pain contracts"; 
• More than half supported the use of urine drug monitoring for chronic opioid patients.  

However, the survey also uncovered significant gaps in knowledge among primary care docs:

• About one-third said they thought most prescription drug abuse occurs by means other than swallowing the pills.  (In fact, crushing/snorting/injecting/etc. happens with far less frequency than simple ingestion.  Multiple studies suggest ingestion accounts for anywhere from 64% to 97% of prescription drug abuse.) 
• Almost 50% believe that abuse-deterrent pills are less addictive than the standard formulation. (In fact, there's absolutely no difference.)  

This last data point is scary.  To me, it shows the success that pharmaceutical companies are having in creating a "halo" of safety around new abuse-deterrent formulations.  There is no "halo" and there's still a great deal of harm that can occur with the use of these medications.  

The primary issue isn't the kind of abuse against which abuse-deterrent formulations can protect patients.  The primary issue is lack of medical necessity.  In most cases, it doesn't matter if the patient's opioid is abuse-deterrent or not.  If it's medically unnecessary, if it's leading to loss of function, if it's leading to dependence and addiction... it needs to go away.  The doctor will be better educated.  The patient will get better.  The cost of care will go down.  Everyone wins.  

Abuse deterrent technology is great, but if we focus on technology over medical necessity, we will have missed the mark and the crisis will continue. 

Michael 

On Twitter @PRIUM1