Mohammad Adil was a PGY1 Pharmacy Practice Resident, Austin De La Cruz is a Clinical Pharmacy Specialist in Mental Health, and Matthew Wanat is a Clinical Pharmacy Specialist in Critical Care, all in the Department of Pharmacy at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston, Texas. J. Douglas Thornton is an Assistant Professor and Policy and Director of the Prescription Drug Misuse Educationand Research (PREMIER) Center; Matthew Wanat is a Clinical Associate Professor and Assistant Director of the PREMIER Center; and Austin De La Cruz is a Clinical Assistant Professor; all at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy. Correspondence: Matthew Wanat (mawanat@uh.edu)
Author disclosures The authors report no actual or potential conflicts of interest with regard to this article.
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After discharge, 7.6% of previously opioid-naïve patients who were treated with opioids in the ICU were still receiving prescriptions for opioids at 12 months. These findings did not suggest a clinically significant increase in the incidence of chronic opioid use after inpatient administration of opioids. However, these results prompt the need for larger, prospective, multicenter studies to evaluate the effect on hospitalization on converting to chronic opioid use and a deeper evaluation of other potential risk factors that may be present.
