Overall opioid volume down in Ont., but many still exceed recommended dose: report
TORONTO — Ontario doctors appear to be prescribing lower amounts of opioids overall to treat patients with pain, say researchers, but many longtime users continue to be given daily doses of the potent narcotics that exceed national practice guidelines.
A report by the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network found the number of people prescribed an opioid remained relatively constant over the past five years, with 1.95 million, or one in seven Ontarians, treated with the potentially addictive medications last year.
However, the overall volume of opioids dispensed fell by 18 per cent between January 2015 and March 2017, driven by a reduction in the amount of long-acting, slow-release formulations — such as fentanyl patches and some types of oxycodone — prescribed to patients.
“There might be a good news story here, in that while there’s similar numbers of people being treated with opioids for pain, it seems as if they’re getting less opioid and they’re getting those opioids in more prescriptions,” said lead author Tara Gomes, a scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.