This review explains harm-reduction strategies for three groups of patients: those who have not received previous opioid therapy, those receiving long-term opioid therapy, and those with an opioid use disorder. It explains both risk assessment and the current approach to the use of medications for opioid use disorder.
INTRODUCTION: Opioid overdose deaths quintupled in Massachusetts between 2000 and 2016. Potentially inappropriate opioid prescribing practices (PIP) are associated with increases in overdoses. The purpose of this study was to conduct spatial epidemiological analyses of novel comprehensively linked data to identify overdose and PIP hotspots. METHODS...
OBJECTIVES: To quantify the frequency and type of medication decisions on discharge from the hospital to hospice care. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. SETTING: A 544-bed academic tertiary care hospital in Portland, Oregon. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 348 adult patients (age > /=18 y) discharged to hospice care between January 1, 2010, and December...
BACKGROUND: Determining infectious cross-transmission events in healthcare settings involves manual surveillance of case clusters by infection control personnel, followed by strain typing of clinical/environmental isolates suspected in said clusters. Recent advances in genomic sequencing and cloud computing now allow for the rapid molecular typing ...
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Nursing homes remain subjected to institutional racial segregation in the United States. However, a standardized approach to measure segregation in nursing homes does not appear to be established. A systematic review was conducted to identify all formal measurement approaches to evaluate racial segregation among nursing h...
Deprescribing, an integral component of a continuum of good prescribing practices, is the process of medication withdrawal or dose reduction to correct or prevent medication-related complications, improve outcomes, and reduce costs. Deprescribing is particularly applicable to the commonly encountered multimorbid older adult with cardiovascular dise...
Venous access is a procedure in which a catheter is placed into a vein for medical diagnosis or therapy. The type of device used depends on the patient and the type of illness being treated. There are two main types of venous access devices: peripheral and central catheters. A peripheral catheter is usually placed into a small vein, often in the ar...
BACKGROUND: This study was to characterize the Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) in Shanghai, China, and to explore factors associated with the decline of patients in MMT during 2005-2016. METHODS: Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used in this study. Based on the data from Shanghai Centers for Disease Control (CDC), we described t...
Objective: Treatment compliance in children with Crohn’s disease is associated with higher levels of symptom remission. We hypothesized that the management, comorbidities, and complications for children with Crohn’s disease would differ based on a diagnosis of noncompliance. Methods: Using the Kids’ Inpatient Database for 2006-2012, we identified y...
Online patient portals may be effective for engaging patients with mental health conditions in their own health care. This retrospective database analysis reports patient portal use among Veterans with mental health diagnoses. Unadjusted and adjusted odds of portal feature use was calculated using logistic regressions. Having experienced military s...
