May 28, 2020

New Opioid Use After Invasive Mechanical Ventilation and Hospital Discharge

Background Information:

Physicians have and continue to heavily contribute to the current opioid epidemic in the United States and Canada.¹ Although much of the focus has been opioid prescriptions given to patients in the emergency department,^2,3 not much attention has been paid to critically ill patients who survive to hospital discharge. The long-term sequelae of these opioids is concerningly overlooked especially when physicians utilize these medications as part of an “analgesia first” approach to sedating critically ill patients for the purposes of invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV).⁴ Previous observational studies in Canada found that approximately 85% of critically ill patients receiving IMV were exposed to opioids.¹ Furthermore, the average daily opioid dosing for 2-7 days was 63 milligrams of morphine equivalent (MME), increasing to 106 MME per day for patients receiving IMV for greater than 7 days. The authors of this study performed a retrospective chart review of population-based data from Ontario Canada to investigate the frequency of new opioid initiation and persistent opioid use among critically ill patients who received mechanical ventilation. They compared this to patients who were hospitalized but not critically ill. ...Read More