“Nearly three of four patients who sustain major trauma and receive a new prescription for an opiate pain reliever will discontinue use of the drug by one month after hospital discharge, according to a new study results presented at the 2016 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons.
Up to one year after discharge from the hospital, only about 1 percent of trauma patients were reportedly still taking prescription opiates, or opioids, such as hydrocodone, oxycodone, morphine, and fentanyl.
“We were really surprised by how low the numbers were for long-term opiate use,” reported senior investigator Andrew Schoenfeld, MD, an orthopaedic surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, Boston. “It appears that traumatic injury is not a main driver for continued opioid use in patients who were not taking opioids prior to their injuries.”
Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-10-opiate-painkillers-severe-injury-long-term.html
Source: MedicalExpress.com – October 20, 2016
