Title: Prescription Drug Abuse - What are Risk Factors for OD Death?<br/>Author: Fermin Barrueto<br/><a href='http://umem.org/profiles/faculty/74/'>[Click to email author]</a><hr/><p>
What are characteristics that increase the chance a patient is at risk for opioid-related death? A recent JAMA article begins to tackle this very issues. Baumblatt et al. found the following:</p>
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1) Patient with 4 or more prescribers had adjusted odds ratio 6.5 for opioid-related death</p>
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2) Patient with 4 or more pharmacies where they get their prescriptions aOR - 6.0</p>
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3) Patient with more than 100 mg of morphine equivalents mean per day aOR - 11.2</p>
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With the new Maryland Prescription Drug Monitoring program (PDMP) we can start looking at a patient's prescription drug use pattern. The recent JAMA article can help you identify patients at high risk to die an opioid-related death. Use the PDMP and be wary if a patient has more than 4 prescribers or pharmacies or has >100mg of morphine equivalents per day.</p>
<fieldset><legend>References</legend>
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<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24589873" ref="ordinalpos=3&ncbi_uid=24589873&link_uid=24589873&linksrc=docsum_title" style="color: rgb(100, 42, 143);">High-Risk Use by Patients Prescribed Opioids for Pain and Its Role in Overdose Deaths.</a></p>
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Baumblatt JA, Wiedeman C, Dunn JR, Schaffner W, Paulozzi LJ, Jones TF.</p>
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<span class="jrnl" title="JAMA internal medicine">JAMA Intern Med</span>. 2014 Mar 3. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.12711. [</p>
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