New guidance on prescribing opioids unveiled by the CDC avoids the strict limits found in a 2016 version that accelerated a nationwide drop in pain pill prescriptions but led to backlash from chronic pain patients.
For the first time in U.S. history, more than 100,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in a single year, health officials say. New guidance on prescribing opioids unveiled Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention avoids the strict limits found in a 2016 version that accelerated a nationwide drop in pain pill prescriptions but led to backlash from chronic pain patients. advises doctors to limit new opioid prescriptions and discuss alternative therapies with patients.
The document includes a dozen recommendations on how and when to manage pain patients, including non-pain-pill therapies, for people in non-hospital settings. Just as important, it does not include the"hard thresholds" from the 2016 version that"were essentially taken out of context beyond intent and applied as rigid laws, regulations and policies," Jones said.
Doctors also should discuss risks and benefits and should consider how opioid prescriptions will be discontinued. "They are trying to thread a needle here," said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health vice dean for public health practice and community engagement."They're trying to balance, on the one hand, the importance of clear guidance to clinicians, and on the other, the danger it could turn intoAfter the 2016 guidelines were released, more than half of states passed laws that limited initial opioid prescriptions for acute pain to seven days or less.
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