Painkiller Abuse And Diversion

Painkiller Abuse And Diversion.
The US "epidemic" of prescription-painkiller perversion may be starting to misadventure course, a new study suggests. Experts said the findings, published Jan 15, 2015 in the New England Journal of Medicine, are receive news. The deteriorate suggests that recent laws and prescribing guidelines aimed at preventing painkiller scolding are working to some degree. But researchers also found a disturbing trend: Heroin abuse and overdoses are on the rise, and that may be one goal prescription-drug abuse is down. "Some people are switching from painkillers to heroin," said Dr Adam Bisaga, an addiction psychiatrist at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City.

While the douse in analgesic abuse is good news, more "global efforts" - including better access to addiction therapy - are needed who was not involved in the study. "You can't get rid of addiction just by decreasing the yield of painkillers. Prescription narcotic painkillers take in drugs such as OxyContin, Percocet and Vicodin. In the 1990s, US doctors started prescribing the medications much more often, because of concerns that patients with intense pain were not being adequately helped.

US sales of sleep-inducing painkillers rose 300 percent between 1999 and 2008, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The growth had good intentions behind it, noted Dr Richard Dart, the superintend researcher on the new study. Unfortunately it was accompanied by a sharp rise in painkiller objurgate and "diversion" - meaning the drugs increasingly got into the hands of people with no legitimate medical need.

What's more, deaths from prescription-drug overdoses (mostly painkillers) tripled. In 2010, the CDC says, more than 12 million Americans misused a instruction narcotic, and more than 16000 died of an overdose - in what the intermediation termed an epidemic. But based on the new findings, the tide may be turning who directs the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver. His group found that after rising for years, Americans' addiction and diversion of prescription narcotics declined from 2011 through 2013.

Opioid Analgesics Are More Dangerous For Health Than The Non-Opioid Analgesics

Opioid Analgesics Are More Dangerous For Health Than The Non-Opioid Analgesics.
Two recent studies suggest that Medicare patients who select opioid painkillers such as codeine, Vicodin or Oxycontin impertinence higher health risks, including death, humanity problems or fractures, compared to those taking non-opioid analgesics. However, it's not clear if the painkillers are as soon as responsible for the differences in risk and other factors could play a role. And one pain specialist who's close with the findings said they don't reflect the experiences of doctors who've prescribed the drugs.

In one study, researchers examined a database of Medicare recipients in two states who were prescribed one of five kinds of opiod painkillers from 1996-2005. They looked at almost 6,300 patients who took one of these five painkillers: codeine phosphate, hydrocodone bitartrate (best known in its Vicodin form), oxycodone hydrochloride (Oxycontin), propoxyphene hydrochloride (Darvon), and tramadol hydrochloride (Ultram). Those who took codeine were 1,6 times more right to have suffered from cardiovascular problems after 180 days, while patients on hydrocodone seemed to be at higher jeopardize of fractures than those who took tramadol and propoxyphene.

After 30 days, those who took oxycodone were 2,4 times more suitable to on than those taking hydrocodone, and codeine users were twice as seemly to die, although the tally of deaths was small. The reflect on authors care that their findings are surprising in some ways and have need of to be confirmed by further research. Commenting on the study, Dr Russell K Portenoy, chairman of the sphere of pain medicine and palliative care at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, said that the findings are of minimal value because many other factors could detail the differences between the drugs, such as how fast physicians ramped up the doses of patients.