-
J. Occup. Environ. Med. · Feb 2012
Increases in the use and cost of opioids to treat acute and chronic pain in injured workers, 1999 to 2009.
- Edward J Bernacki, Larry Yuspeh, Robert Lavin, and Xuguang Grant Tao.
- Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA. Bernacki@jhmi.edu
- J. Occup. Environ. Med. 2012 Feb 1;54(2):216-23.
ObjectiveQuantify temporal changes in opioid use.MethodsClaim and prescription data for Louisiana Workers' Compensation Corporation claims open from 1999 and 2009 were analyzed by claim age and type of opioid.ResultsThere was a significant cumulative yearly increase in morphine milligram equivalents prescribed for claimants with acute pain (55-mg increase per year), as well as chronic pain (461-mg increase per year). The cost per morphine milligram equivalent was approximately the same ($0.06 to $0.07) for long- and short-acting medications, but the medication cost was 8 times higher in claims where long-acting opioids were prescribed (with or without short-acting opioids) versus only short-acting medications.ConclusionsThe annual cumulative dose and cost of opioids per claim increased over the study period related to an increase in prescriptions for long-acting opioids.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*,_underline_or**bold**. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>and subscript<sub>text</sub>. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3., hyphens-or asterisks*. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com) - Images can be included with:
 - For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote..