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Looking at medication options for substance use disorder, there is buprenorphine which is a full mu opioid agonist and also has an affinity to the kappa receptor which is what makes it lower liability in terms of abuse. Buprenorphine has been around for a long time. In the 1980s it was an injectable...
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Researchers at University of California San Francisco have released a chilling analysis of the spread of illicitly produced fentanyl into the worldwide drug abuse marketplace. The study was undertaken in an effort to determine whether the increase in fentanyl-containing substances was more demand...
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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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Dr. Aljassem: In reviewing the literature with topical opioids, like many things that are kind of outside the box, a lot of it is not standardized. But what we do know is that they are effective in reducing pain and they are minimally absorbed systemically so they do have a high benefit with low...
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In a presentation at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress 2018, clinicians from Cleveland Clinic Akron General Hospital detailed a treatment protocol that avoids the use of opioids following colorectal surgery and that results in shorter hospital stays. Lead author Sophia Horattas, MD...
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Practitioners end up at risk in drug testing because they lack knowledge of the policies that payors put out on medical necessity. They also can get into a lot of trouble if they don’t understand the mechanics of the clinical laboratory regarding presumptive testing and definitive testing. It’s...
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I definitely would agree that methadone needs to be respected. I think the other thing, though, is there is such a negative stigma about it that a lot of practitioners have kind of thrown their hands up saying, ‘I don’t understand this, we’re not going to do it.’ What we learn about are always the...
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I would start off by saying that methadone definitely doesn’t have a sense of humor. I think as a practitioner, you have to not only understand the literature for methadone but also the limitations of what we know of methadone. It can be very unforgiving, and so really having a respect for those...
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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...
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A small study conducted by researchers from the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV (CDUHR) at New York University concludes that managers and staff of publicly patronized business establishments can be effective first responders to incidents of opioid overdose, if they are properly trained. A prior...