ArticleOccupational and environmental medicine2024
Secular trends in gabapentinoid dispensing by compensated workers with low back pain: a retrospective cohort study.
Article in Occupational and environmental medicine, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Regional Variation in Management Strategies for Occupational Low Back Pain in Australia.Journal of occupational rehabilitation · 2026Article
- Longitudinal patterns of opioid dispensing dosages for compensated Australian workers with low back pain: a 3.5-year follow-up study.Pain medicine (Malden, Mass.) · 2025Article
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8 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesThe increase in gabapentinoid prescribing is paralleling the increase in serious harms. To describe the low back pain workers compensation population whose management included a gabapentinoid between 2010 and 2017, and determine secular trends in, and factors associated with gabapentinoid use.
methodsWe analysed claim-level and service-level data from the Victorian workers' compensation programme between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2017 for workers with an accepted claim for a low back pain injury and who had programme-funded gabapentinoid dispensing. Secular trends were calculated as a proportion of gabapentinoid dispensings per year. Poisson, negative binomial and Cox hazards models were used to examine changes over time in incidence and time to first dispensing.
resultsOf the 17 689 low back pain claimants, one in seven (14.7%) were dispensed at least one gabapentinoid during the first 2 years (n=2608). The proportion of workers who were dispensed a gabapentinoid significantly increased over time (7.9% in 2010 to 18.7% in 2017), despite a reduction in the number of claimants dispensed pain-related medicines. Gabapentinoid dispensing was significantly associated with an opioid analgesic or anti-depressant dispensing claim, but not claimant-level characteristics. The time to first gabapentinoid dispensing significantly decreased over time from 311.9 days (SD 200.7) in 2010 to 148.2 days (SD 183.1) in 2017.
conclusionsThe proportion of claimants dispensed a gabapentinoid more than doubled in the period 2010-2017; and the time to first dispensing halved during this period.
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