NEW YORK – The nation’s leading public health agency on Thursday relaxed its guidelines for American doctors prescribing oxycodone and other opioid pain relievers.
The new recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are an update to the 2016 guidelines that added momentum to the decrease in opioid painkiller prescriptions.
Opioid pain relievers can be addictive, even when used by prescription, and have been identified as one of the main reasons for the rise in drug overdoses in the United States, which began more than two decades ago.
Other drugs surpassed them in overdose statistics, with illicit fentanyl now the main killer. According to some experts, the previous indications have succeeded in reducing inappropriate and dangerous prescriptions.
But they were also seen as an obstacle to treatment, with some pharmacists refusing to fill out prescriptions while doctors wrote them. The new guidelines are designed to ensure patients receive compassionate and safe pain care, CDC officials said.
A draft published in February received 5,500 public comments. Some changes have been made, but several important changes remain, including:
—The CDC no longer suggests trying to limit opioid treatment for acute pain to three days.
—The agency is removing the specific recommendation that doctors avoid increasing the dose to a level equivalent to 90 milligrams of morphine per day.
—For patients receiving higher doses of opioids, the CDC urges doctors not to abruptly stop treatment unless there are signs of life-threatening. The agency offers suggestions on how to gradually reduce patients’ use of drugs.
It is estimated that one person dies every five minutes, according to health authorities.
