Follow-Up: Effects of a Pandemic and Isolation on Alcohol and Psychoactive Medication Use in a Population of Rehabilitation and Pain Patients.

Objective: The conjunction of the coronavirus disease lockdown and the use of illicit drugs suggests the potential increase in drug usage and opioid deaths. Because of other studies, we felt the need to examine if the lockdown has caused a change in the drug intake of our population of substance abuse and pain management patients. Our initial study indicated no increase in the use of illicit and antianxiety drugs.

Effects of a Pandemic and Isolation on Alcohol and Psychoactive Medication Use in a Population of Rehabilitation and Pain Patients.

Objective: The conjunction of the coronavirus disease lockdown and the use of illicit drugs suggests the potential increase in drug usage and opioid deaths. Because of other studies, we felt the need to examine if the lockdown has caused a change in the drug intake of our population of substance abuse and pain management patients.

Materials: Urine drug testing is a strategy to reduce harm to patients in pain management and substance abuse treatment programs.

Lower Cutoffs for LC-MS/MS Urine Drug Testing Indicates Better Patient Compliance.

Background: Urine drug testing is used by health care providers to determine a patient's compliance to their prescribed regimen and to detect non-prescribed medications and illicit drugs. However, the cutoff levels used by clinical labs are often arbitrarily set and may not reflect the urine drug concentrations of compliant patients.

Objectives: Our aim was to test the hypothesis that commonly used cutoffs for many prescribed and illicit drugs were set too high, and methods using these cutoffs may yield a considerable number of false-negative results.