Opioid

Findings indicated use of opioid analgesics was associated with increased risk for hip fracture among patients on maintenance hemodialysis.

Patients who received liposomal bupivacaine prior to closure during rotator cuff repair as part of a multimodal pain protocol had significantly reduced opioid consumption with no adverse events, readmissions or opioid-related side-effects compared with patients who did not receive liposomal bupivacaine, according to results.

Implementation of anatomic and procedure-specific opioid-prescribing guidelines may effectively reduce inadvertent overprescribing of opioids while maintaining patient satisfaction and minimizing refill demands among patients undergoing upper extremity surgery, according to results.

Medicaid expansion may have led to reductions in opioid-related hospitalizations between 2005 and 2017, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

From 2017 to 2018, the rate of all drug overdose deaths decreased 4.1%, prescription opioid-involved overdose deaths decreased 13.5% and heroin deaths dropped 4%, according to the CDC. However, agency also reported that deaths involving synthetic opioids, excluding methadone, increased by 10% during that same period.

Individuals with opioid use disorder who were treated with opioid agonists had an 80% lower risk for opioid overdose death than those who did not receive medications during treatment, according to findings of a retrospective cohort study published in Addiction.

PHOENIX — Results presented at the Orthopaedic Research Society Annual Meeting showed a reduction in opioid prescriptions by orthopedic surgeons to Medicare Part D patients among states that permitted access to medical cannabis.

More than one in four opioid poisonings involve children and adolescents, and the severity of hospital admissions for acute opioid ingestions has increased over a recent 14-year period, according to findings presented at the Society of Critical Care Medicine’s Critical Care Congress.

ORLANDO — Cataract surgery patients who take prescription opioids were five times more likely to have an intraoperative complication and three times more likely to have a postoperative complication, according to authors of a poster presented here at Cataract Surgery: Telling It Like It Is.

Pharmacies are front and center as the second phase of a multidistrict lawsuit over the opioid crisis begins, a law professor told Healio Primary Care.