The most recent issue of Pain
Pathways magazine (Summer 2012) covered the recommendations for patients on
long-term opioid therapy. The original
article may be found by reading below.
“Medication monitoring such as
urine drug screening helps physicians stanch the growing number of prescription
painkiller overdoses. In a report
late last year, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that the number of
annual overdoses from narcotic pain relievers such as Vicodin, oxycontin,
Opana, and methadone are at more than 20,000. The CDC has called this a “public health epidemic”.
Ameritox, a national leader in pain
medication monitoring, has provided an unrestricted grant to the Jefferson
School of Population Health for the development of consensus recommendations
for patients on long-term opioid therapy.
Recommendations seek to bring
uniformity to the use of pain medication monitoring, a tool that many
physicians use to aid treatment decisions for patients on chronic opioid therapy. The recommendations also spell out how
a physician treating chronic pain patients can determine which patients to
test, how frequently to monitor and what clinicians should do in response to
abnormal test results. For
instance, the consensus calls for drug monitoring a patient with medium to high
risk of misuse at least four times a year.
The consensus recommendations could
help improve adherence and reduce misuse, abuse, and diversion of powerful
painkillers.”
