Opioid prescriptions after surgery decline

That is the finding from a JAMA Network Open paper by Zhang et al. (2023). The authors use 2016-2022 data from the IQVIA Longitudinal Prescription Database, which claims to capture 92% of retail pharmacy prescriptions. First, fewer opioids prescriptions were made (extensive margin): During January 2016 to December 2022, the monthly surgical opioid dispensing rate…

Rising deaths due to synthetic opioids

National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) examines trends in opioid overdoses in their recent infographic. Unsurprisingly, opioid deaths have risen dramatically in recent years, but may have plateaued in the last 12 months. Opioid deaths are more common among prime working age individuals (age 25-54). NIHCM used data from the Wide-ranging Online Data for…

Fentanyl tops drug overdose death rates

RAND has an interesting report titled “The Future of Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Opioids.” What is truly startling is the rise in deaths due to synthetic opioids like fentanyl in the last 5 years: from 3,000 in 2013 to approximately 30,000 in 2018. In fact, synthetic opioids are now involved in twice as many deaths…

The opioid crisis in numbers

Most people who spend time in health care are aware of the opioid crisis. But how bad is it really? The National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Foundation provides a number of interactive graphs to quantitatively describe how the opioid crisis has evolved between 2000 and 2017. For instance, the the graph below shows…

Why did life expectancy fall in Canada?

According to a news report in The Globe and Mail, one of the primary reasons for falling life expectancy in Canada is the opioid epidemic. Life expectancy in Canada has stopped increasing for the first time in more than four decades, due largely to soaring overdose deaths in the Western provinces. In British Columbia, the…

Can legalizing marijuana save lives?

In recent years, a number of states have legalized medical marijuana. While marijuana may not be good for you, can it be used as a substitute for more dangerous substances such as prescription opioids and heroin? To use an analogy, perhaps marijuana is to vaping ans opioids/heroin are to smoking. In fact, a recent paper…

What is the FDA doing about opioids?

The FDA is planning to put additional scrutiny on the use and approval of opioids in order to prevent opioid abuse and addiction.  Here is their plan: Re-examine the risk-benefit paradigm for opioids and ensure that the agency considers their wider public health effects Convene an expert advisory committee before approving any new drug application for an…