Further, she said, “We tend to prescribe a bit haphazardly.” The same study found wide variation in regional inpatient opioid-prescribing practices, with inpatients in the U.S. Midwest, South, and West seeing adjusted relative rates of exposure to opioids of 1.26, 1.33, and 1.37, compared with the Northeast, she said.
Mike Stanczyk/MDedge News
Dr. Teryl K. Nuckols
Among the more concerning findings, she said, was that “hospitals that prescribe opioids more frequently appear to do so less safely.” In hospitals that fell into the top quartile for inpatient opioid exposure, the overall rate of opioid-related adverse events was 0.39%, compared with 0.21% for hospitals in the bottom quartile of opioid prescribing, for an overall adjusted relative risk of 1.23 in opioid-exposed patients in the hospitals with the highest prescribing, said Dr. Herzig.
Dr. Nuckols, director of the division of general internal medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, engaged attendees to identify challenges in acute pain management among hospitalized adults.
© Frontline Medical Communications 2018-2021. Reprinted with permission, all rights reserved.