Michael Ellenbogen, MD
Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine 

What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) are becoming an increasingly important and larger part of the healthcare workforce, especially in general internal medicine. To our knowledge, differences in opioid prescribing among generalist physicians, NPs, and PAs have not been evaluated. We aimed to learn if there are differences in opioid prescribing among generalist physicians, NPs, and PAs to Medicare beneficiaries.     

We performed a serial cross-sectional analysis of prescription claims from 2013 to 2016 using publicly available data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. All generalist physicians, NPs, and PAs who provided more than ten total prescription claims between 2013 and 2016 were included. These prescribers were subsetted as practicing in a primary care, urgent care, or hospital-based setting.

We found that the overall volume and proportion of opioid prescribing is heavily right-skewed. The mean opioid prescription proportions (as a proportion of all prescription claims) for physicians in primary care, urgent care/walk-in clinics, and hospital medicine were 4.69, 6.72, and 6.66 relative to 7.10, 11.97, and 11.01 for PAs.  The adjusted total opioid claims across these four years for physicians was 660 (95% confidence interval: 660-661), for NPs was 755 

(95% CI: 753-757), and for PAs was 812 (95% CI: 811-814). 

What should readers take away from your report?

PainRelief.com Interview with:
Ley (Ashley) Muller, PhD
University of Oslo

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings?

Response: The North American opioid crisis is clearly linked to the high availability of prescription opioids. In the Nordic countries of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, the pharmaceutical industry is much more regulated, including bans on marketing to physicians, so the market isn’t flush with opioids. However, these countries have ageing populations with some of the highest rates of chronic non-cancer pain in the world, and over-prescription for this type of pain was one of the triggers of the North American crisis. 

This begs the question: how sure are we that strong pharmaceutical regulations alone can protect countries from prescription opioid problems?  

PainRelief.com Interview with:

B. Wycke Baker, MD
Chief of Service, Anesthesiology at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women
Clinical Professor of Anesthesiology, Obstetrics and Gynecology
Baylor College of Medicine 

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings?

Response: For this study, we reviewed the charts of 201 women who underwent cesarean deliveries and received a multimodal pain management protocol with or without a TAP block utilizing EXPAREL, a long-acting, non-opioid option to manage pain following surgery. A TAP block, or a transversus abdominis plane block, is a field block that numbs the nerves that supply the abdominal wall. The study included patients who underwent elective, unscheduled waiting list, or emergency cesarean delivery with combined spinal-epidural anesthesia and post-cesarean pain management at Texas Children’s Hospital Pavilion for Women between 2012 and 2015.

The findings revealed many positive outcomes for patients who received a TAP block utilizing EXPAREL compared to those who received multimodal pain control without a TAP block utilizing EXPAREL. For instance, patients who received EXPAREL TAP block showed a significant decrease in postsurgical pain as well as a significant decrease in opioid consumption. On average, patients who received EXPAREL TAP block had shorter time to discharge from PACU, shorter time to readiness for discharge to home, and shorter length of stay in hospital than those who did not receive EXPAREL TAP block.

Further, a significantly higher number of patients treated with EXPAREL TAP block (12%) compared to those without EXPAREL TAP block (3%) consumed no opioids after surgery. Fewer patients treated with EXPAREL TAP block (34%) compared to those without EXPAREL TAP block (50%) reported any adverse events following the delivery.

PainRelief.com Interview with:

Edward R. Mariano, MD, MAS (Clinical Research)
Chief, Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care Service and
Associate Chief of Staff for Inpatient Surgical Services
VA Palo Alto Health Care System
Professor of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine
Palo Alto, CA  94304

PainRelief.com:  What is the background for this study?  What are the main findings?

Response: Today, there is so much attention on the opioid epidemic, and patients and clinicians are constantly reminded about the dangers of opioids. Guidelines have recommended the provision of patient and caregiver education on pain management, especially on how to taper (safely decrease and eventually stop taking) opioids after surgery. With over 70 fellowship programs in regional anesthesiology and acute pain medicine, we assumed that there would be plenty of information for patients on safe opioid management online since most people use the internet to find health-related information. We conducted a rigorous search for online patient education materials related to safe opioid management, evaluated to reading level and content, and compared materials produced by fellowship programs to other online educational materials. Unfortunately, the average reading level for all materials we found was above the level recommended for patients (sixth grade or lower). Most fellowship programs in regional anesthesiology and acute pain medicine did not even offer online patient education materials and were less likely to describe overdose risk and opioid disposal. Less than half of all materials mentioned tapering or cessation of opioids after surgery (see visual abstract attached).