Publications by authors named "I E Tseregounis"
Article Synopsis
- The study investigated the impact of tapering off chronic opioid use on pain-related healthcare utilization, including emergency department visits and hospitalizations.
- Conducted from 2015-2019 with over 47,000 adult patients, the research found that tapering opioids led to more emergency visits and hospitalizations but fewer primary care visits related to pain.
- Overall, the findings suggest that while tapering may be intended to reduce opioid use, it could lead to an increase in acute pain-related healthcare needs.
Context: Health plan disenrollment may disrupt chronic or preventive care for patients prescribed long-term opioid therapy (LTOT).
Purpose: To assess whether overdose events in patients prescribed LTOT are associated with subsequent health plan disenrollment.
Design: Retrospective cohort study.
Article Synopsis
- Associations between changes in prescribed opioid doses over 30 days and the risk of fatal overdoses were explored, revealing that both significant increases and decreases in dosage raise the risk within the following 15 days.
- A study conducted in California examined over 5 million patients using prescription data, identifying key dose categories and their correlation with overdose occurrences.
- Findings indicate that patients experiencing major dose shifts (up or down) face heightened risks, especially those with very high current or previous dosing levels, while concurrent benzodiazepine prescriptions further increase overdose vulnerability.
Background: To help prevent overdose deaths involving prescription drugs, accurate linkage of prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) records for individual patients is essential.
Objectives: To compare the accuracy of the linkage program used by California's PDMP against various record linkage programs with respect to accuracy in deduplicating patient identities in the PDMP, with implications for identifying high-risk opioid use and outlier behaviors.
Research Design: We evaluated California's program, Link Plus, LinkSolv, and The Link King on 557 861 PDMP identity records with addresses in two 3-digit zip code areas for patients who filled a controlled substance prescription in 2013.
Importance: Patients prescribed long-term opioid therapy are increasingly undergoing dose tapering. Recent studies suggest that tapering is associated with short-term risks of substance misuse, overdose, and mental health crisis, although lower opioid dose could reduce risks of adverse events over the longer term.
Objective: To assess the longer-term risks of overdose or mental health crisis associated with opioid dose tapering.