Opioid initiation leads to sustained use in only 3% of patients: Aussie study
Adults with sustained opioid use tend to be older and have more comorbidities.
Most patients started on opioids use them short term, with minimal evidence of prolonged use over five years, according to an Australian-first study.
The analysis of nearly 3.5 million adults with or without cancer who started on opioids for any indication found that fewer than 3% had sustained use.
“These individuals were older and had more comorbidities and use of psychotropic and other analgesic drugs, which likely reflected a higher prevalence of pain and treatment needs,” said the researchers from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at UNSW Sydney.
The NSW population–based study used PBS data from 2003 to 2018 to classify patients’ long-term opioid use, based on dispensing frequency over the follow-up period.
