Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Benjamin Aaron Bleiberg , Kyle Andrew Westbrook , Chul Ahn , Saad A. Khan
Background: Between 1999-2018, the CDC reported 232,000 deaths from prescription opioids. Lung cancer patients receive many opioid and adjunctive pain medication prescriptions. The frequency, duration, and impact of these prescriptions is unknown. Methods: We used the electronic medical record to catalogue opioid and adjunctive pain medication prescriptions given to adult cancer patients at our academic and county-affiliated health systems from 2009-2016. We identified the association of opioid and adjunctive pain medication use with patient characteristics including cancer stage and radiation therapy. Results: 1510 lung cancer patients were identified, of which 1061 had opioid prescriptions (70%). Of patients with prescriptions: hydrocodone was prescribed to 90%, morphine 35%, hydromorphone 17%, fentanyl 16%, and oxycodone 13%. 330/1061 patients had adjunctive medication prescriptions, of which, gabapentin was prescribed to 90%, pregabalin 14% and carbamazepine 2%. 296/330 patients prescribed adjunctive medications also had an opioid prescription with the following frequency: hydrocodone 90%, hydromorphone 33%, fentanyl 27%, morphine 41%, and oxycodone 23% 7/1061 patients with opioids had naloxone prescribed. Opioid usage by cancer stage is shown in the table. 211/1510 patients (13%) had prescriptions for ≥3 different opioids; 97/330 (33%) patients with adjunctive prescriptions, had prescriptions for ≥3 different opioids. Of patients treated with radiation for >4 weeks, 66% received opioids, with the proportion receiving opioids increasing with each fraction of radiation up to a rate of 90% with 5 or more fractions. 87% of patients prescribed opioids alone had an active opioid prescription 3 months after their last date of radiation as did 91% of those prescribed adjunctive medications in addition to opioids. In the total dataset: 55% of patients were from the university system and 45% were from the county system and other settings. Of the lung cancer patients with opioid prescriptions: 69% were from the university system and 31% were from other settings. Conclusions: Opioids are commonly prescribed in patients with any stage of lung cancer, particularly those with stage >1 with hydrocodone being the most prescribed. In the period under study, adjunctive medications such as gabapentin were prescribed much less than and rarely without opioids. Some lung cancer patients received ≥3 distinct opioids, with higher rates seen in those with adjunctive medicine prescriptions. Further studies to evaluate system wide opioid prescribing trends and discrepancies related to demographic factors are needed.
Cancer Stage | Total Patients | Opioid Meds Only | Adjunctive Meds | Both Opioid and Adjunctive Meds |
---|---|---|---|---|
0 | 1 | 1 (100%) | 0 | 0 |
1 | 239 | 93 (39%) | 46 | 37 |
2 | 82 | 43 (52%) | 22 | 19 |
3 | 437 | 239 (55%) | 95 | 87 |
4 | 726 | 370 (51%) | 164 | 151 |
N/A | 25 | 14 (56%) | 3 | 2 |
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