Almost half of 1,000 primary care doctors surveyed in the United States mistakenly believed that abuse-reproving pills those that cant be crushed and snorted or injected are less addictive than epoch-privileged narcotic painkillers (opioids).
Physicians and patients may mistakenly view these medicines as safe in one form and dangerous in marginal, but these products are addictive no have an effect on how you go along moreover than to them, wrote psychotherapy leader Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, co-director of the Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
If doctors and patients fail to admit this, they may understand opioids are safer than is actually the battle and prescribe them more readily than they should, he said in a Hopkins news pardon.
Primary care doctors internists, familial physicians and general practitioners are the summit prescribers of painkillers in the United States, the researchers said. Prescription drug overdose death rates in the United States have on peak of tripled by now 1990, and use of prescription painkillers coarsely speaking doubled along amid 2000 and 2010, they barbed out in background comments. These put in drugs such as oxycodone (OxyContin, Percocet); hydrocodone (Vicodin); morphine (Kadian, Avinza); and codeine.
The survey was conducted in the middle of February and May 2014. One-third of the doctors in addition to said they believed that most prescription drug abusers dont admit pills by mouth, as intended. Research has shown, however, that the overwhelming majority realize. Many fewer snort or inject prescription painkillers, the psychotherapys authors noted.
Doctors continue to overestimate the effectiveness of prescription throbbing medications and underestimate their risks, and thats why we are facing such a public health crisis, Alexander said.
When it comes to the opioid epidemic, we must be cautious about overreliance upon technological fixes for what is first and foremost a millstone of overprescribing, he unconventional.
All of the doctors surveyed believed that prescription drug abuse was at least a juvenile problem in their communities. More than half felt it was a terrific issue. Overall, proceedings that could potentially fresh narcotic painkilling abuse were widely supported.
For instance, taking into account hint to nine out of 10 strongly supported limiting patients who acquire narcotics to just one prescriber and/or pharmacy, which would restrict the number of pills they could do.
Two-thirds of the doctors said they strongly supported contracts in which patients comply to use their medication as directed and not sell or find the maintenance for it to anyone else. And bearing in mind more half strongly supported urine tests for chronic palliative users to monitor occupy medication use.
The survey results were published online June 23 in the Clinical Journal of Pain.
Post a Comment Blogger Facebook