Back to the Future: Current and Future Opioid Abuse Risk Assessment

Both chronic pain and the harms associated with prescription opioid abuse, including serious adverse events and fatalities, are enormous public health problems. Opioid therapy has been a cornerstone of a multimodal approach to the management of chronic pain. However, the increased rate of opioid prescriptions has been paralleled by the abuse of prescription opioids in the US, escalating more than 113% between 2004 and 2013. Recent clinical guidelines and professional society position papers for opioid prescribing recommend that prior to initiating opioid therapy in selected candidates, providers should screen patients to identify those at risk for developing an opioid use disorder (OUD) and that patients maintained on opioids long term should be routinely monitored for the development of aberrant drug related behaviors suggestive of abuse. (Recorded at PAINWeek 2019)