Prescription Opioid Misuse Index: a brief questionnaire to assess misuse.

The Prescription Opioid Misuse Index (POMI) was developed and used in a larger study designed to assess correlates of OxyContin abuse in pain patients prescribed OxyContin, patients treated for OxyContin addiction, and individuals incarcerated for OxyContin-related charges. The POMI was administered to 40 subjects with addiction problems and 34 pain patients who had received OxyContin for pain. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis indicated that endorsing two or more of six items reliably classified a person as at risk for misuse of their medication.

OxyContin use and misuse in three populations: substance abuse patients, pain patients, and criminal justice participants.

Objective: This study was designed to describe and compare individuals in rural Appalachia prescribed, abusing or diverting OxyContin a region with high rates of prescription medication abuse and misuse.

Setting And Participants: Fifty subjects treated for OxyContin abuse, 34 subjects prescribed OxyContin for pain and 50 subjects incarcerated due to OxyContin-related charges from rural Appalachia.

Interventions: The Addiction Severity Index, DSM-IV Checklist, and an investigator developed questionnaire were administered to all three groups.

Women physicians and addiction.

Nine hundred and sixty-nine impaired physicians (125 women and 844 men) enrolled in one of four state physician health programs were evaluated with comprehensive psychosocial, psychiatric and substance abuse/dependence profiles. When compared to male impaired physicians at time of entry to physician health programs, the 125 female impaired physicians were younger (39.9 vs.

Tramadol post-marketing surveillance in health care professionals.

Tramadol has been marketed in the US since 1995. The US Food and Drug Administration agreed to release tramadol as a non-scheduled drug if proactive post-marketing surveillance studies would be conducted. This study was one of two phase IV protocols that were part of the overall surveillance program.