Against the backdrop of an unrelenting opioid crisis, two new government reports warn that America’s seniors are succumbing to the pitfalls of prescription painkillers.
Issued by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the reports reveal that millions of older Americans are now filling prescriptions for many different opioid medications at the same time, while hundreds of thousands are winding up in the hospital with opioid-related complications.the team found, opioid-driven complications were the cause for nearly 125,000 hospitalizations—and more than 36,000 emergency department visits—among seniors in 2015.
The report also uncovered other alarming trends. Between 2010 and 2015, there was a 34 percent jump in the number of opioid-related inpatient hospital admissions among seniors, even as non-opioid-related inpatient hospitalizations dropped by 17 percent.
Similarly, AHRQ investigators found that opioid-related emergency department visits among seniors shot up by 74 percent, while non-opioid related emergency department visits only increased 17 percent.”
Read more at: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-09-opioid-crisis-seniors.html
Source: MedicalExpress.com – September 19, 2018
