Publications by authors named "Marek Chawarski"

Article Synopsis
  • This study aimed to assess whether a method called implementation facilitation is more cost-effective than traditional educational strategies in promoting the use of buprenorphine for opioid use disorder in emergency departments (EDs).
  • Researchers conducted a cost-effectiveness analysis during "Project ED Health," measuring outcomes like quality-adjusted life-years and patient engagement with community care, and found that while the costs were similar, the facilitation method led to significantly better effectiveness.
  • The results indicated a 74% to 75% chance that implementation facilitation is considered cost-effective within typical health care spending thresholds, suggesting it could be a viable approach to improve opioid treatment outcomes.
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, also known as kratom, has been reported to have a broad range of pharmacological properties. Freshly harvested leaves and their water extracts are consumed in Southeast Asia while preparations made from dried leaf material are consumed in Western countries. Our study evaluated the phytochemical composition of freshly harvested kratom leaves using LCMS/MS analysis of water and ethanol liquid extracts.

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Purpose Of Review: Kratom plant, products derived from the plant, and plant phytochemicals are of great interest among researchers, clinicians, and consumers. However, there is a paucity of rigorously collected scientific data on their risk/safety profile and public health impact. This scoping review discusses original research articles published between 2022 and 2023.

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Mitragyna speciosa Korth also known as kratom, is an herbal drug preparation for its therapeutic properties and opioid-replacement therapy. Kratom is consumed in a brewed decoction form in Malaysia and to date, no studies have characterized its chemical and toxicity profile. Thus, this study aims to evaluate kratom decoction's safety and toxicity profile after 28 days of treatment.

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Importance: An increasing number of emergency departments (EDs) are initiating buprenorphine for opioid use disorder (OUD) and linking patients to ongoing community-based treatment, yet community-based clinician and staff perspectives regarding this practice have not been characterized.

Objective: To explore perspectives and experiences regarding ED-initiated buprenorphine among community-based clinicians and staff in geographically distinct regions.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This qualitative study reports findings from Project ED Health, a hybrid type 3 effectiveness-implementation study designed to evaluate the impact of implementation facilitation on ED-initiated buprenorphine with referral to ongoing medication treatment.

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Introduction: Clinical pharmacists are well positioned to enhance efforts to promote emergency department (ED)-initiated buprenorphine to treat opioid use disorder (OUD). Among clinical pharmacists in urban EDs, we sought to characterize barriers and facilitators for ED-initiated buprenorphine to inform future implementation efforts and enhance access to this highly effective OUD treatment.

Methods: This study was conducted as a part of Project ED Health (CTN-0069, NCT03023930), a multisite effectiveness-implementation study aimed at promoting ED-initiated buprenorphine that was conducted between April 2017 and July 2020.

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Importance: Emergency department (ED)-initiated buprenorphine for the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD) is underused.

Objective: To evaluate whether provision of ED-initiated buprenorphine with referral for OUD increased after implementation facilitation (IF), an educational and implementation strategy.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This multisite hybrid type 3 effectiveness-implementation nonrandomized trial compared grand rounds with IF, with pre-post 12-month baseline and IF evaluation periods, at 4 academic EDs.

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Mitragynine exerts its analgesic effect mainly via opioid receptors activation. Additionally, the effect may be mediated via mitragynine's anti-inflammatory property and non-opioid receptor pain pathways, namely through the TRPV1 receptor. No studies identify hitherto, hence, the current study aimed to investigate the mitragynine's analgesic effect via the anti-inflammatory property, non-opioid receptor (TRPV1) and the effective dose (ED) to alleviate pain.

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Objective: We assessed the frequency of emergency department (ED) HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) screening in a high-risk cohort of ED patients with untreated opioid use disorder (OUD).

Methods: This analysis used data from a prospective, observational study of English-speaking adults with untreated OUD enrolled from April 2017 to December 2018 in 4 urban, academic EDs. Two cohorts were defined for this analysis by self-reported negative/unknown status for HIV (cohort 1) and HCV (cohort 2).

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Importance: Emergency departments (EDs) are increasingly initiating treatment for patients with untreated opioid use disorder (OUD) and linking them to ongoing addiction care. To our knowledge, patient perspectives related to their ED visit have not been characterized and may influence their access to and interest in OUD treatment.

Objective: To assess the experiences and perspectives regarding ED-initiated health care and OUD treatment among US patients with untreated OUD seen in the ED.

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Restrictive orders and temporary programmatic or changes within healthcare and other supportive systems that were implemented in response to the COVID-19 epidemic in Malaysia may have created hindrances to accessing healthcare and/or receiving other supportive services for people who use drugs (PWUDs). A primarily qualitative study has been conducted to evaluate how service providers and recipients were adapting and coping during the initial periods of the COVID-19 response. The study engaged several healthcare and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the peninsular states of Penang, Kelantan, Selangor, and Melaka.

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Background And Aim: To address the widespread severe problems with opioid use disorder, buprenorphine-naloxone treatment provided by primary care physicians has greatly expanded treatment access; however, treatment is often provided with minimal or no behavioral interventions. Whether or which behavioral interventions are feasible to implement in various settings and improve treatment outcomes has not been established. This study aimed to evaluate two behavioral interventions to improve buprenorphine-naloxone treatment.

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Objective: Emergency medicine clinicians are uniquely positioned to deliver interventions to enhance linkage to evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) in the acute overdose period, yet little is known about patient perspectives to effectively engage patients immediately following opioid overdose. Our objective was to explore patients' perspectives on substance use treatment, perceived needs, and contextual factors that shape the choice of patients seen in the emergency department (ED) to engage with treatment and other patient support services in the acute post-opioid overdose period.

Methods: We administered a brief quantitative survey and conducted semistructured interviews with 24 adult ED patients receiving care after an acute opioid overdose between June 2016 and August 2017 in an urban, academic ED.

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BACKGROUND Little is known regarding the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of emergency department (ED) patients with untreated opioid use disorder (OUD) and the relationship of those characteristics with whether they were seeking a referral to substance use treatment at the time of their ED visit. METHODS Using data collected from 2/2017-1/2019 from participants enrolled in Project ED Health (CTN-0069), we conducted a cross-sectional analysis of patients with untreated moderate to severe OUD presenting to one of four EDs in Baltimore, New York City, Cincinnati, or Seattle. Sociodemographic and clinical correlates, and International Classification of Diseases Tenth Revision (ICD-10) diagnosis codes related to opioid withdrawal, injection-related infection, other substance use, overdose, and OUD of those seeking and not seeking a referral to substance use treatment on presentation were compared using univariate analyses.

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Study Objective: Concurrent use of amphetamine-type stimulants among individuals with opioid use disorder can exacerbate social and medical harms, including overdose risk. The study evaluated rates of amphetamine-type stimulant use among patients with untreated opioid use disorder presenting at emergency departments in Baltimore, MD; New York, NY; Cincinnati, OH; and Seattle, WA.

Methods: Emergency department (ED) patients with untreated opioid use disorder (N=396) and enrolled between February 2017 and January 2019 in a multisite hybrid type III implementation science study were evaluated for concurrent amphetamine-type stimulant use.

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: Kratom has a long history of traditional medicine use in Southeast Asia. Consumption of kratom products has also been reported in the US and other regions of the world. Pain relief is among many self-reported kratom effects but have not been evaluated in controlled human subject research.

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Importance: Treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD) with buprenorphine decreases opioid use and prevents morbidity and mortality. Emergency departments (EDs) are an important setting for buprenorphine initiation for patients with untreated OUD; however, readiness varies among ED clinicians.

Objective: To characterize barriers and facilitators of readiness to initiate buprenorphine for the treatment of OUD in the ED and identify opportunities to promote readiness across multiple clinician types.

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Background: The efficacy or tolerability of paliperidone extended release (ER) in the treatment of methamphetamine (METH)-associated psychosis (MAP) is unknown. This study was designed to assess the tolerability and efficacy of paliperidone ER and risperidone for the treatment of MAP in China.

Methods: This 25-day randomized clinical trial involved 120 patients with acute MAP symptoms who were randomized to receive either paliperidone ER or risperidone from baseline to day 25 of an inpatient hospital stay.

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Background: Patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) frequently present to the emergency department (ED) after overdose, or seeking treatment for general medical conditions, their addiction, withdrawal symptoms, or complications of injection drug use, such as soft tissue infections. ED-initiated buprenorphine has been shown to be effective in increasing patient engagement in treatment compared with brief intervention with a facilitated referral or referral alone. However, adoption into practice has lagged behind need.

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Purpose Of Review: To review the literature on decriminalization of drug use from 2016 to 2017 and suggest the way forward.

Recent Findings: The systematic review of the literature on decriminalization resulted in seven articles that discuss decriminalization as compared with 57 published articles on legalization. Decriminalization of drug use did not have an effect on the age of onset of drug use and the prices of drugs did not decrease after the implementation of drug decriminalization.

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Background: Amphetamine type stimulants (ATS) use is highly prevalent and frequently co-occurs with opioid dependence in Malaysia and Asian countries. No medications have established efficacy for treating ATS use disorder. This study evaluated the safety, tolerability, and potential efficacy of atomoxetine for treating ATS use disorder.

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Background: Despite increasing reliance on prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) as a response to the opioid epidemic, the relationship between aberrant drug-related behaviors captured by the PDMP and opioid use disorder is incompletely understood. How PDMP data should guide emergency department (ED) assessment has not been studied.

Objectives: The objective was to evaluate a relationship between PDMP opioid prescription records and self-reported nonmedical opioid use of prescription opioids in a cohort of opioid-dependent ED patients enrolled in a treatment trial.

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Background And Aims: In a recent randomized trial, patients with opioid dependence receiving brief intervention, emergency department (ED)-initiated buprenorphine and ongoing follow-up in primary care with buprenorphine (buprenorphine) were twice as likely to be engaged in addiction treatment compared with referral to community-based treatment (referral) or brief intervention and referral (brief intervention). Our aim was to evaluate the relative cost-effectiveness of these three methods of intervening on opioid dependence in the ED.

Design: Measured health-care use was converted to dollar values.

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