Opioids Use and Abuse: Prescription Practice, Attitude, and Beliefs among Doctors of Karachi.

Background Opioid analgesics, also known as narcotics, are medicinal drugs used primarily for the management of pain secondary to any type of cancer, severe injury or surgery. Due to the ease of availability, opioids are commonly abused. In 2015, reported deaths exceeded 33,000 Americans from opioid overdose. A survey in 2013 revealed nearly 1.6 million Pakistanis abusing prescription opioids for non-medical needs. Although commonly prescribed by primary care physicians, most of them are diffident to stand by all the recommended strategies to reduce the incidence of opioid abuse. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted during the period of August through October 2018. A sample size of 365 was determined using a 95% confidence interval at a degree of precision of 5%. A 22-item questionnaire was given to doctors with at least two years practicing experience either from a private or a public healthcare setup. Doctors who had never prescribed opioids were excluded from the study. Out of the eligible participants, 15 refused to take part in the survey, and the co-operation rate was recorded as 95.8%. Collected data were analyzed using statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 22 for Windows. Frequencies, percentages, mean, standard deviation, and chi-square were used to explore the variables. The statistical significance level was considered at