1/We salute experts who insist on *evidence* for preventive screening recommendations. Question-based screening for drug use in primary care has been endorsed by #USPSTF and @UnhealthyAlcDrg points out is it not evidence based practice jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…
2/For screening to be “evidence based”, when you apply it to people who have no sign of the disease, the screening produces significant benefit & no (or minimal) harm. #USPSTF has new different standard:that treatment works for folks with problems, mostly seeking treatment
3/Of course there are lots of reasons docs should wish to know whether patients happen to use drugs. That is not in dispute as a matter of common sense. But...
4/There are, to my view, several problems that emerge with proposing that doctors “should screen” as an evidence based protective intervention. It strongly suggests a mistaken notion that docs detect & fix drug use the way we do with early cancer. Sorry that is a shibboleth
5/When we focus on docs screening as “fix” we misdirect policy. People who use are making choices in real time,constrained by biology & circumstance, but they are responding to social &environmental& life history realities. It’s happy talk to assume your PCP will “detect and fix”
6/Once USPSTF endorses a recommendation, primary care docs will of course be penalized for not doing it rigorously across all patients, even when that particular action does not help them. This is misallocation of attention.
7/Again, just to affirm, I’m perfectly comfortable asking many questions of my patients, including drug use. It is not offensive. But there are penalties when we waive standards of evidence for embracing medical practice standards. Perhaps anyone reading Tweet #7 agrees. FIN/
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Truth💣 1/ The “NARXCare” opioid Rx risk algorithm is in all Prescription Monitoring Databases,ie ~1 bn Rx’s/year
NOW in @JournalGIM
✅evidence does not yet exist to support it as safe or protective
✅It has flourished due to lack of federal oversight link.springer.com/article/10.100…
2/The authors, led by Dr Michele Buonara, review the core argument as one in which this algorithm with low evidence to its favor
and high risk of harm
has gone unregulated
despite apparently fulfilling @US_FDA criteria that mandate it be regulated
3/Nearly all prescribers and national pharmacies now see the Bamboo Health, Inc proprietary “NARXcare” algorithm in a more prominent position *than the prescription history itself” when they view a prescription history.
1/Arguing for methadone deregulation, Dr. Ruth Potee notes that in an auditorium of 400 addiction specialists, almost NONE prescribe methadone (because they can't)
"Methadone is a miracle drug that no one has access to"
There are more people who offer Botox than offer methadone
Patient: “I can still do my activities”.
Doc: "No way, not really. I read the SPACE trial, and there is NO benefit (that would outweigh the opioids’ risk)”
"Shared decision-making" seems *doomed* here
1/I watch with concern as DEA prosecutions of MDs still seem to rely on “they prescribed more than I would” despite a 9-0 ruling of
Supreme Court last year
Sudden termination of opioids & progressive abandonment of 5-8 million patients is dangerous
1/Even on inpatient rounds, it is possible to introduce the idea that addiction isn’t (only) in the brain.
I contrast @NIAAAnews “brain disease” against a behavioral economics vide substance use as a pattern of behavior occurring in relation to environmental context
2/On teaching rounds we read aloud and discussed the @NIAAAnews brain-science model of addiction, pulling just a few lines off their website
3/then we read lines from Chapter 39 of “Evaluating the Brain Disease Model of Addiction” - this presents harmful substance use as a pattern of behavior based on assessment of competing rewards, delay or uncertainty of desired rewards, risks and costs - ie behavioral economics
1/In thinking about the OPAL opioid Trial (as 1st line treatment for back pain) - and other trials, I want to model an idea that I welcome others to shoot down or support
Comparing mean effects of opioid to placebo as 1st line treatment
2/studying the average effect for a treatment with very ⬆️ variability of “benefit” and “aversive” responses is confusing
it makes comparisons to placebo a bit of a mess.
Here is my hypothetical graph of a placebo’s average range of aversive impacts and beneficial impacts
3/With placebo - I suggest- whatever bad effects people feel (even if they are not truly “caused” by placebo) or benefits are either along some narrow range.