ArticleJournal of the American Dental Association (1939)2024
Trajectories of opioid prescribing by general dentists, specialists, and oral and maxillofacial surgeons in the United States, 2015-2019.
Article in Journal of the American Dental Association (1939), 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- De-Implementing Low-Value Care in Dentistry: The Case for Choosing Wisely Campaigns.Community dentistry and oral epidemiology · 2026Article
- Opioid Prescribing by US Dentists and Dental Specialists after Continuing Education.JDR clinical and translational research · 2026Article
- Article
- Trends of Dispensed Opioids Prescribed by Australian Dentists: 2013-2022.Community dentistry and oral epidemiology · 2026Article
- Education regarding opioid prescription within oral and maxillofacial surgery residency programs: a survey study.Journal of dental anesthesia and pain medicine · 2025Article
- Evaluation of a continuing education course on guideline-concordant management of acute dental pain.BMC oral health · 2024Article
- Rural-urban differences in dental opioid prescribing among adolescent/young adult and adult Medicaid beneficiaries.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundDespite decreases in opioid prescribing from 2016 through 2019, some dentists (general, specialists, oral and maxillofacial surgeons) in the United States continue to prescribe opioids at high rates. The authors' objective was to define dentists' trajectories of opioid prescribing.
methodsThe authors identified actively prescribing dentists from the IQVIA Longitudinal Prescription data set, from 2015 through 2019. Group-based trajectory modeling identified opioid prescribing trajectories on the basis of dentists' annual prescribing rates for the overall sample (model 1) and for high prescribers (model 2). The authors used χ
resultsIn model 1 (n = 199,145 prescribers), group-based trajectory modeling identified 8 trajectories that were grouped into 5 categories. A total of 14.8% were nonprescribers who composed less than 1% of all prescriptions, low prescribers (3 groups; 46.0%) prescribed at low rates (2015: 5.5%-16.9%; 2019: 1.5%-11.9%), decliners (7.3%) decreased prescribing rapidly (2015: 29.4%; 2019: 5.1%), moderately high prescribers (2 groups; 28.5%) prescribed moderately (2015: 28.7% and 39.2%; 2019: 18.1% and 28.8%), and consistently high prescribers (3.4%) prescribed at high rates (2015: 54.6%; 2019: 44.7%). In model 2, from consistently high prescribers (n = 6,845), 4 trajectories were identified. Of these 4 groups, 1 group (7.5%) declined prescribing rapidly. The groups did not differ meaningfully; however, the rapid decliners included fewer oral and maxillofacial surgeons (13.0% vs 18.4%), saw more Medicaid patients (2.5% vs 1.0%), and had higher opioid prescribing rates in 2015 (95.5% vs 91.6%) (P < .001 for all).
conclusionsThe authors identified variations in dentists' opioid prescribing rates. Although 60% of dentists decreased prescribing rates by 30% through 83%, 3.4% of dentists consistently prescribed at high rates. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Some dentists continue to prescribe opioids at high levels, indicating that additional information is needed to better inform policy and clinical decision making.
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