ArticleJNCI cancer spectrum2024
Opioid use in cancer patients compared with noncancer pain patients in a veteran population.
Article in JNCI cancer spectrum, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Changes in opioid prescribing and high-risk co-prescribing after implementation of the 2016 CDC opioid guideline among older adults with and without cancer.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2026Article
- Medication prescription patterns in cancer rehabilitation physiatry outpatients: A multicenter retrospective study.PM & R : the journal of injury, function, and rehabilitation · 2026Article
- Understanding pain in malignant mesothelioma: a prospective, longitudinal cohort study.BMC palliative care · 2026Observational
- Associations between neighborhood disadvantage, cannabis use, and patient-reported outcomes among patients with cancer.Drug and alcohol dependence reports · 2026Article
- Purposeful Shared Decision-Making in Caring for and with Patients with Chronic Pain Receiving Opioid Therapy.Journal of general internal medicine · 2025Article
- LLM-Guided Pain Management: Examining Socio-Demographic Gaps in Cancer vs non-Cancer cases.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- The contribution of nonmedical opioid use to healthcare encounters for opioid overdose and use disorders among long-term users with metastatic cancer.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2024Article
- Article
- Opioids and Cancer: Current Understanding and Clinical Considerations.Current oncology (Toronto, Ont.) · 2024Review
- Increased pain in veterans with cancer-time to re-evaluate opioid prescribing practices?JNCI cancer spectrum · 2024Article
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11 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundOpioid safety initiatives may secondarily impact opioid prescribing and pain outcomes for cancer care.
methodsWe reviewed electronic health record data at a tertiary Veterans Affairs system (VA Palo Alto) for all patients from 2015 to 2021. We collected outpatient Schedule II opioid prescriptions data and calculated morphine milligram equivalents (MMEs) using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conversion formulas. To determine the clinical impact of changes in opioid prescription, we used the highest level of pain reported by each patient on the 0-to-10 Numeric Rating Scale in each year, categorized into mild (0-3), moderate (4-6), and severe (7 and above).
resultsAmong 89 569 patients, 9073 had a cancer diagnosis. Cancer patients were almost twice as likely to have an opioid prescription compared with noncancer patients (69.0% vs 36.7%, respectively). The proportion of patients who received an opioid prescription decreased from 27.1% to 18.1% (trend P < .01) in cancer patients and from 17.0% to 10.2% in noncancer patients (trend P < .01). Cancer and noncancer patients had similar declines of MMEs per year between 2015 and 2019, but the decline was more rapid for cancer patients (1462.5 to 946.4, 35.3%) compared with noncancer patients (1315.6 to 927.7, 29.5%) from 2019 to 2021. During the study period, the proportion of noncancer patients who experienced severe pain was almost unchanged, whereas it increased among cancer patients, reaching a significantly higher rate than among noncancer patients in 2021 (31.9% vs 27.4%, P < .01).
conclusionsOur findings suggest potential unintended consequences for cancer care because of efforts to manage opioid-related risks.
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