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In honor of American Pharmacists Month this October, we want to highlight the essential role healthcare professionals play in managing opioid use disorder (OUD). OUD presents significant challenges, especially when treating patients with concurrent pain. This complexity arises from the delicate...
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Elimination of X-Waiver and Training Requirements for New MATE ACT
As a healthcare provider, you've probably heard about the Medication Access and Training Expansion (MATE) Act but may be unclear about precisely what it means for you. This comprehensive overview can help you better understand it...
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The American Journal of Managed Care has published an article highlighting the need for policy changes in prescribing opioids postsurgery. The level of opioid dispensing in morphine milligram equivalents in 2019 was nearly 3 times greater than in 1999. In an effort to encourage use of pain...
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Pain remains one of the most common reasons that people seek medical attention in the United States. When pain was designated as the fifth vital sign, people were given the right to have their pain assessed and effectively treated by their healthcare professionals. A number of ethical dilemmas have...
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With our current climate of opioid overuse and increasing opioid related deaths, alternatives to pure mu opioids are necessary. Buprenorphine, an important weapon in the arsenal for management of substance use disorder, is now rising in popularity as an opioid option for chronic pain. Evidence has...
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Newswise — A researcher from the University of Houston has found that adults who take prescription opioids for severe pain are more likely to have increased anxiety, depression and substance abuse issues if they also use marijuana.
"Given the fact that cannabis potentially has analgesic...
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The gabapentinoids are a popular class of medications among prescribers for use in chronic pain and various other neurological conditions. In fact, prescription rates for both gabapentin and pregabalin have increased in the United States and other countries in recent years. However, these...
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Newswise — In a common narrative of the path to opioid misuse, people become addicted to painkillers after a doctor prescribed them pills to treat an injury and then, later, switch to harder drugs, such as heroin. However, nonmedical opioid users were more likely to say they began abusing opioids...
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A study of almost 23,000 patients in North Carolina who were hospitalized for infective endocarditis found that 11% could be linked to the patient’s history of drug abuse, and that the incidence of IE admissions has escalated in step with the state’s crisis of opioid abuse. According to the authors...
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An analysis conducted by researchers at University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health concludes that rising death rates from drug overdoses in the US long precede the now notorious “opioid crisis,” and that a near perfect exponential growth curve in these rates can be tracked back to the...