Opioid Analgesics Are More Dangerous For Health Than The Non-Opioid Analgesics

Opioid Analgesics Are More Dangerous For Health Than The Non-Opioid Analgesics.
Two inexperienced studies suggest that Medicare patients who clutch opioid painkillers such as codeine, Vicodin or Oxycontin audacity higher health risks, including death, marrow problems or fractures, compared to those taking non-opioid analgesics. However, it's not clear if the painkillers are in a responsible for the differences in risk and other factors could play a role. And one pain specialist who's frequent with the findings said they don't reflect the experiences of doctors who've prescribed the drugs.

In one study, researchers examined a database of Medicare recipients in two states who were prescribed one of five kinds of opiod painkillers from 1996-2005. They looked at almost 6,300 patients who took one of these five painkillers: codeine phosphate, hydrocodone bitartrate (best known in its Vicodin form), oxycodone hydrochloride (Oxycontin), propoxyphene hydrochloride (Darvon), and tramadol hydrochloride (Ultram). Those who took codeine were 1,6 times more appropriate to have suffered from cardiovascular problems after 180 days, while patients on hydrocodone seemed to be at higher chance of fractures than those who took tramadol and propoxyphene.

After 30 days, those who took oxycodone were 2,4 times more proper to hanker than those taking hydrocodone, and codeine users were twice as fitting to die, although the add of deaths was small. The on authors caveat that their findings are surprising in some ways and needfulness to be confirmed by further research. Commenting on the study, Dr Russell K Portenoy, chairman of the section of pain medicine and palliative care at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City, said that the findings are of circumscribed value because many other factors could spell out the differences between the drugs, such as how fast physicians ramped up the doses of patients.

So "I would suggest that readers note this as an pronouncement and wait for the next set of studies to try to figure out if there's any reality in there in terms of risk". A substitute study published in the same issue of the journal compared opioid painkillers against non-opioid analgesics, and found that forbearing "adverse events" were more likely when an opioid was taken.

A team led by Dr Damiel H Solomon of Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, compared the aegis of opioids against non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs, which take in aspirin, ibuprofen and naproxen) and "coxib" drugs such as Celebrex (celecoxib). They tracked outcomes for almost 13000 Medicare recipients who took such aching relievers between 1999 and 2005.

The Boston troupe found that patients on opioids had higher rates of adverse events usually than did people taking an NSAID or a coxib drug. For example, 101 of every 1000 prescription opioid users suffered a breakage in a given year versus 19 of every 1000 people taking another type of painkiller.

Coxibs and opioids were also associated with a higher jeopardize for cardiac events compared to NSAID use, the set found. What to do if you're taking an opioid? "There's no question that opioid drugs carry eminent risks view website. If you have chronic pain, your doctor should optimize the dosing and be managing the risk: not only the gamble of side effects and toxicities but also the risk of things like drug abuse".