Scientists from the University of Michigan found that a third of people who underwent weight-loss surgery were at high risk of overdosing from prescription drugs.
After their operations, these at-risk patients were much more likely to be prescribed a secondary opioid (a different drug from the one given to help them deal with post-surgical pain) than patients at lower risk of overdose.
Patients with high overdose risk scores were also more likely to have been diagnosed with a mental health condition and to go to the emergency room for issues that didn’t require hospitalization.
People who are obese often experience chronic pain – and are more likely to be prescribed opioids to help them cope with that pain.
The research is published in Surgical Endoscopy and was conducted by Oliver Varban et al.
In the study, the team used NARxCHECK (abbreviated as Narx) scores developed by the state’s prescription drug monitoring program to assess the overdose risk of each patient they studied.
If a person has a Narx score of 200, that means they have 10 times the risk of unintentionally overdosing from prescription drugs as a person with a score of 0.
Typically, about 75% of patients in the state score below 200 on any given day, but the researchers found that 32 percent of the obese patients with weight loss surgery were above that threshold.
The team also found that 83% percent of patients with a Narx score over 200 received more than 10 pills of an opioid that was not the same as the one prescribed to help them cope with pain as they recovered from their surgeries — compared to zero patients with a Narx score under 100.
In more than two-thirds of these instances, the health care providers who wrote these additional prescriptions were not part of the bariatric surgery program.
In addition, no patients with a Narx score under 100 had what’s known as a preventable emergency room visit — when someone visits the emergency room for a health concern that is not severe enough to require hospitalization nor related to a complication from surgery — while 8% of patients with a score of 200 and above did.
The team says the goal and focus are still to limit the number of opioids prescribed.
The one thing that researchers would probably change based on these results is to do more follow-up amongst patients with a higher Narx score to establish better non-narcotic pain control options and to help patients avoid unnecessary emergency room visits.
If you care about weight loss, please read studies about exercise that has unique benefits for weight loss, and avoid these 5 mistakes if you want to lose weight effectively.
For more information about pain, please see recent studies about what you need to know about headache pain, and results showing this therapy can effectively treat pain, depression and anxiety.
Copyright © 2022 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
