Thread by @hope411adcock

2)which underscores the need for close supervision of these patients."

Let's take a look at their rationale for their conclusion.

Of 9940 patients who received 3 or more #opioid prescriptions over an 8 years, 51 experienced an #overdose, 6 of the 51 experienced a fatal event.

3)The researchers did not make the yearly data available, nor did they provide data on any known prior history of Substance Use Disorder #SUD within the #Patient population.

It's impossible to determine how they performed their calculations to obtain these results.

4)While they did provide percentage risk based on MME dosages, they also Risk based folks multipliers which obscures actual risk. The highest percentage of risk reported based on MME dosage was less than 2%,

Limitation: Low OD Rate 🙄🤦‍♂️

acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/00…

5) Since they didn't provide the actual number of events per year, we'll assume they were evenly divided per year.

Annual Rate:
Overdose rate 0.64/1000 [(RPO = E/P*1000)/8], (E= 5.13) = 0.064%
Mortality Rate 0.0094/1000 [(RPO = E/P*1000)/8], (E= 0.75) = 0.00094%

6)Their conclusion that #patients with #ChronicPain taking #opioid analgesics under medical supervision need to be monitored closely and are at a HIGH risk of #overdose is based on:

➡️ a 0.64% risk of experiencing a non-fatal #overdose, and

➡️ a 0.00094% risk of a fatal OD

7)Yes, you are reading that correctly!

They consider less than 2/3 of 1% risk of a non-fatal overdose & less than 1/1000th of 1% risk of a fatal overdose for patients taking #opioid analgesics for chronic noncancer #pain to be high risk & in need of increased monitoring.

8)So what do you think?

Data Designed to Deceive?

Agenda Based Research?

Personal / Professional Bias Affecting Study Reporting?