Chief Medical Officer PainScript Salt Lake City, Utah
Opioid analgesics are an important part of our therapeutic armamentarium but can have serious adverse consequences. Behind the headline-making opioid crisis, lies the second and more silent public health crisis of untreated chronic pain and patient suffering, as many clinicians have difficulty providing adequate care. However, all opioids are not the same, and they vary in their potential for respiratory depression (the major cause of opioid overdose death) and abuse. For example, unlike conventional opioids that rely on mu-opioid receptor agonism for analgesia, the atypical opioid buprenorphine has additional mechanisms that increase the separation between desired therapeutic effects and unwanted adverse effects. Another example is abuse-deterrent opioid formulations, which are designed to reduce opioid misuse but do not all offer the same level of manipulation resistance to help protect patients and others who may gain access to their medications. The faculty will critically review differences between opioids, to assist clinicians in making benefit-risk assessments when selecting appropriate opioids to prescribe for patients with chronic pain, when needed.
Learning Objectives After completing this activity, participants should be better able to: • Describe the pharmacologic and safety advantages of buprenorphine—a schedule III, atypical opioid—over conventional schedule II opioid analgesics. • Differentiate between the abuse-deterrent properties, clinical impact, abuse/diversion outcomes, and economic outcomes of the abuse-deterrent formulations of opioid analgesics currently available for chronic pain. • Apply a strategy to make a benefit-risk assessment to select and initiate appropriate opioids for chronic pain that have safety advantages over traditional opioids and formulations.
This activity is jointly provided by Center for Independent Healthcare Education and PharmaCom Group, Inc. Supported by an educational grant from Collegium Pharmaceutical, Inc.
