High-risk opioid use prevalent in patients with haematologic malignancy

Many adult patients with haematologic malignancies (HM) have high-risk opioid use, which can increase their risk of opioid-related harms, reveals a study.

A total of 43,190 patients (mean age 54 years) diagnosed with HM from 1 January 2013 through 31 December 2019 were included in this retrospective cohort study. Most patients had a lymphoma diagnosis (61.9 percent).

The authors described the rates of high-risk opioid use (based on Pharmacy Quality Alliance measures) and opioid-related harms, including incident opioid use disorder (OUD) diagnoses and opioid-related hospitalizations or emergency department (ED) visits.

Multivariable Cox regression was used to calculate adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) and 95 percent confidence intervals (CIs) and compare the risk of opioid-related harms between patients with and without high-risk opioid use.

Nearly half of the participants (49.2 percent) had an opioid dispensed in the follow-up period. Of the patients, 20.0 percent had high-risk opioid use, 0.9 percent had an OUD diagnosis, and 0.3 percent had an opioid-related hospitalization/ED visit during follow-up.

Notably, high-risk opioid use contributed to a 3.3-fold higher risk of an OUD diagnosis (p<0.001) and 4.2-fold increase in opioid-related hospitalization/ED visit (p<0.0001).

“These findings highlight the importance of continually monitoring pain and opioid use throughout HM survivorship to provide safe, effective HM pain management,” the authors said.