• Katya Peri, Lucy Honeycutt, Erica Wennberg, Sarah B Windle, Kristian B Filion, Genevieve Gore, Irina Kudrina, Elena Paraskevopoulos, Areesha Moiz, Marc O Martel, and Mark J Eisenberg.
• Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, QC, Canada.
• Bmc Med. 2024 Feb 20; 22 (1): 7676.

BackgroundTo combat the opioid crisis, interventions targeting the opioid prescribing behaviour of physicians involved in the management of patients with chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP) have been introduced in clinical settings. An integrative synthesis of systematic review evidence is required to better understand the effects of these interventions. Our objective was to synthesize the systematic review evidence on the effect of interventions targeting the behaviours of physician opioid prescribers for CNCP among adults on patient and population health and prescriber behaviour.MethodsWe searched MEDLINE, Embase, and PsycInfo via Ovid; the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews; and Epistemonikos. We included systematic reviews that evaluate any type of intervention aimed at impacting opioid prescriber behaviour for adult CNCP in an outpatient setting.ResultsWe identified three full texts for our review that contained 68 unique primary studies. The main interventions we evaluated were structured prescriber education (one review) and prescription drug monitoring programmes (PDMPs) (two reviews). Due to the paucity of data available, we could not determine with certainty that education interventions improved outcomes in deprescribing. There is some evidence that PDMPs decrease the number of adverse opioid-related events, increase communication among healthcare workers and patients, modify healthcare practitioners' approach towards their opioid prescribed patients, and offer more chances for education and counselling.ConclusionsOur overview explores the possibility of PDMPs as an opioid deprescribing intervention and highlights the need for more high-quality primary research on this topic.© 2024. Crown.

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