Opioid prescribing within the workers’ compensation system in general has been a cause for concern. The objective of the study was to estimate the prevalence of opioid users among injured workers, referred at a Tertiary Care Pain Clinic, in 2008-2009. A cross-sectional retrospective study of 110 consecutive workers; male/female ratio was 2.3:1; mean age 45.5 years; mean pain ratings were 7.1±1.8. 21% of the workers were diagnosed with a biomedical problem (Group I), 51% with medical/psychological factors (Group II) and 25.5% had identifiable psychological factors but no physical pathology (Group III). Opioids were prescribed in 81.8%; of those 32.2% were on >200mg of daily morphine or equivalent (MED). A higher proportion of opioid users were in Group II and Group III than Group I. The vast majority of referred injured workers in this study were on opioid therapy with 1 in 3 exceeding the “watchful” dose of 200 mg MED
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/65439 |
Date | 18 June 2014 |
Creators | Lakha, Shehnaz Fatima |
Contributors | Mailis-Gagnon, Angela |
Source Sets | University of Toronto |
Language | en_ca |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Thesis |
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