CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 1,180Opioid Use Disorder TreatmentPain Management and Opioid UseSubstance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 207 of the 210 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Opioid Epidemic in the United States

Open access
Manchikanti, Laxmaiah·2012·Pain Physician
DOI 10.36076/ppj.2012/15/es9
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Over the past two decades, as the prevalence of chronic pain and health care costs have exploded, an opioid epidemic with adverse consequences has escalated. Efforts to increase opioid use and a campaign touting the alleged undertreatment of pain continue to be significant factors in the escalation. Many arguments in favor of opioids are based solely on traditions, expert opinion, practical experience and uncontrolled anecdotal observations. Over the past 20 years, the liberalization of laws governing the prescribing of opioids for the treatment of chronic non-cancer pain by the state medical boards has led to dramatic increases in opioid use. This has evolved into the present stage, with the introduction of new pain management standards by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) in 2000, an increased awareness of the right to pain relief, the support of various organizations supporting the use of opioids in large doses, and finally, aggressive marketing by the pharmaceutical industry. These positions are based on unsound science and blatant misinformation, and accompanied by the dangerous assumptions that opioids are highly effective and safe, and devoid of adverse events when prescribed by physicians. Results of the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) showed that an estimated 22.6 million, or 8.9% of Americans, aged 12 or older, were current or past month illicit drug users, The survey showed that just behind the 7 million people who had used marijuana, 5.1 million had used pain relievers. It has also been shown that only one in 6 or 17.3% of users of non-therapeutic opioids indicated that they received the drugs through a prescription from one doctor. The escalating use of therapeutic opioids shows hydrocodone topping all prescriptions with 136.7 million prescriptions in 2011, with all narcotic analgesics exceeding 238 million prescriptions. It has also been illustrated that opioid analgesics are now responsible for more deaths than the number of deaths from both suicide and motor vehicle crashes, or deaths from cocaine and heroin combined. A significant relationship exists between sales of opioid pain relievers and deaths. The majority of deaths (60%) occur in patients when they are given prescriptions based on prescribing guidelines by medical boards, with 20% of deaths in low dose opioid therapy of 100 mg of morphine equivalent dose or less per day and 40% in those receiving morphine of over 100 mg per day. In comparison, 40% of deaths occur in individuals abusing the drugs obtained through multiple prescriptions, doctor shopping, and drug diversion. The purpose of this comprehensive review is to describe various aspects of crisis of opioid use in the United States. The obstacles that must be surmounted are primarily inappropriate prescribing patterns, which are largely based on a lack of knowledge, perceived safety, and inaccurate belief of undertreatment of pain. Key words: Opioid abuse, opioid misuse, nonmedical use of psychotherapeutic drugs, nonmedical use of opioids, National Survey on Drug Use and Health, opioid guidelines.

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.36076/ppj.2012/15/es9

Cites

207 of 207 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Part of this paper’s reference list could not be split into single entries.

Show all 210 references

Research works printed but not linked: 12

  1. Côté P, Cassidy JD, Carroll L. The Sas- katchewan Health and Back Pain Survey. The prevalence of neck pain and related disability in Saskatchewan adults. Spine (Phila Pa 1976) 1998; 23:1689-1698.
  2. Kidner CL, Mayer TG, Gatchel RJ. High- er opioid doses predict poorer func- tional outcome in patients with chron- ic disabling occupational musculoskele- tal disorders. J Bone Joint Surg Am 2009; 91:919-927.
  3. Fauber J. Painkiller boom fueled by net- working. Journal Sentinel, Feb. 18, 2012.
  4. Ensuring availability of controlled med- ications for the relief of pain and pre- venting diversion and abuse: Striking the right balance to achieve the optimal public health outcome. Discussion pa- per based on a scientific workshop, Jan- uary 18-19, 2011, UNODC, Vienna.
  5. Nicholson BD. Panel Discussion. Pain Med 2012; 13:S21-S22.
  6. Nicholson BD. Introduction. Pain Med 2012; 13:S1-S3.
  7. A fresh view of opioids. The BackLetter 2011; 26:4, 37.
  8. Gostomzyk JG, Heller WD. Prescribing strong opioids for pain therapy and for substitution therapy by established phy- sicians. Schmerz 1996; 10:292-298.
  9. authors listed]. Pain management failing as fears of prescription drug abuse rise. J Pain Palliat Care Pharmaco- ther 2010; 24:182-183.
  10. Chou R, Huffman L. Use of Chronic Opi- oid Therapy in Chronic Noncancer Pain: Evidence Review. American Pain Society; Glenview, IL: 2009. www.ampainsoc.org/pub/pdf/Opioid_Final_ Evidence_Report.pdf
  11. The American Academy of Pain Medi- cine, the American Pain Society. The use of opioids for the treatment of chron- ic pain. A consensus statement from the American Academy of Pain Medi- cine and the American Pain Society. Clin J Pain 1997; 13:6-8.
  12. Ameri- can Pain Society (APS). Policy statement. Optimizing the treatment of pain in patients with acute presentations. Ann Emerg Med 2010; 56:77-79. 139. American College of Emergency Physi- cians. Policy statement. Electronic pre- scription monitoring. Approved by the ACEP Board of Directors, October 2011.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 501–600 of 1,000

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Manchikanti, L.
Affiliations
University of Louisville (US)
Corresponding author
Manchikanti, Laxmaiah
ORCID
Manchikanti, Laxmaiah
Venue
Pain Physician
Publisher
American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians
Published
2012-07-14
Volume
3S;15
Issue
3S;7
Pages
ES9-ES38
ISSN
  • 1533-3159 (ISSN-L)
  • 2150-1149
DOI
10.36076/ppj.2012/15/es9
OpenAlex
W100098653
Cited by
1,180
References
210
Citations by year
2026: 19 · 2025: 33 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 55 · 2022: 69 · 2021: 90 · 2020: 160 · 2019: 115 · 2018: 144 · 2017: 121 · 2016: 95 · 2015: 99 · 2014: 80 · 2013: 55 · 2012: 8
FWCI
74.73
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Pain Physician (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Funders
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Opioid Use Disorder Treatment
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine › Pain Management and Opioid Use
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes
Keywords
opioid epidemic, opioid prescribing, chronic non-cancer pain, hydrocodone, prescription drug misuse, opioid diversion, doctor shopping, pharmaceutical industry influence, Joint Commission, National Survey on Drug Use and Health
MeSH terms
Analgesics, Opioid, Humans, Opioid-Related Disorders, Pain, Practice Patterns, Physicians', United States, Inappropriate Prescribing, Epidemics

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review