Prescription of opioids in Sweden. Regional variation from a quantitative and qualitative perspective. Introduction: Opioids plays an important role in healthcare as they are used primarily for severe acute pain, postoperative purposes and cancer-related pain. However, they also carry a risk for drug addiction, which can lead to many health and societal problems. Consequently, prescribing of opioids should be very restrictive. Aim: Describe and evaluate the change in the prescribing of opioids in different Swedish regions, as well as to assess potential reasons behind the change over time in selected regions. Methods: Quantitative data on dispensed prescriptions with opioids between 2015 and 2020 were collected from the Swedish Prescribed Drug Register held by National Board of Health and Welfare. The data was used to identify the change in opioid prescribing in the country and the variation between regions. The quantitative assessment was complemented with qualitative semi-structured interviews with representants from four regions that had the largest and smallest change in opioid prescribing, respectively, to discuss factors that may have influenced the prescribing. Results: The number of individuals per 1000 inhabitants who were dispensed opioid prescriptions decreased from 85 to 67 during the study period. The choice of opioid substances changed with a decrease in prescription of tramadol and codeine/paracetamol, and increase in oxycodone prescription. The variation in opioid prescription between different regions was around 45 %. This variation was not associated with socio-economic factors. Regions that worked actively with information campaigns, training courses and implementation of the recommendations for more rational use of opioids prescribed less opioids and decreased the most during the study period. Conclusion: The number of individuals per 1000 inhabitants who obtained opioid prescriptions decreased overall but there was a substantial variation between regions showing the potential to improve drug prescribing with local activities. Continuous implementation of recommendations needs to be done for more rational opioid use.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-466941 |
| Date | January 2021 |
| Creators | Othman, Al-Bayati |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för farmaci |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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