The opioid epidemic is affecting countless lives and communities across the country, including here in Hawaii. While opioids are extremely beneficial when combating pain, they come with a high risk of misuse and addiction. This is especially true for teens and young adults, in part because adolescent brains are not fully matured and are therefore more susceptible to the effects of opioids.
Let’s talk about one potentially overlooked aspect of the opioid epidemic — its connection to oral health. The following is some information to consider:
• What’s the connection between opioid addiction and wisdom teeth? More than 5 million people had their wisdom teeth removed last year, mostly teens and young adults. While the decision to remove wisdom teeth should involve professional advice from a dentist or oral surgeon, patients and parents also should be aware of the risks associated with potential exposure to opioids following this procedure. For many young people, wisdom teeth extraction often represents their first exposure to opioids, and a recent study from Stanford University found that teens can end up in a battle with opioid addiction following this procedure.
• Is there a safe dosage of opioids to manage pain? Other than in extreme cases, it’s important to limit prescriptions for the minimum appropriate dosage and number of days, which the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends at three days and fewer than 50 morphine milligram equivalents per day. This is because the likelihood for chronic opioid use increases after the third day of use and rises rapidly thereafter and can lead to addiction to more-powerful illicit drugs.
• What are some alternative pain medications? If you or a loved one is prescribed an opioid following a dental procedure or another medical event, it is a good idea to ask your health care professional if there are alternatives, including over-the-counter pain relievers such as a combination of acetaminophen and ibuprofen. In many cases, these medications can be equally effective in pain management, without the risk of addiction.
• What’s the proper way to dispose of opioids? Approximately 70 percent of misused opioid prescriptions were obtained, stolen or purchased from a friend or relative, according to the CDC. That’s why it’s important to keep opioids in a safe place — like a locked cabinet — and always properly dispose of unused medications. That can include returning the drugs to your pharmacy, or mixing them with water and an unappealing substance, such as cat litter, and putting in the trash (if simply thrown in the trash, unused prescription drugs can be retrieved and misused).
• What’s being done to educate parents and health professionals? In collaboration with Shaterproof, a national nonprofit confronting the opioid epidemic, UnitedHealthcare is now airing public service announcements on television and radio across the country to help parents and health professionals understand the connection between oral health and the opioid epidemic.
For more information about oral health and the opioid epidemic, visit https://newsroom.uhc.com/opoids.html.
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Dr. Ronald Fujimoto is chief medical officer, UnitedHealthcare Community Plan Hawaii.
Enough with the broad brush, moralizing sleight of hand from health care industry representatives.
Making patients endure unnecessary pain after dental surgery isn’t going to stop the widespread abuse of street-supplied vicodin, heroine and fentanyl.
Lumping street drugs together with legitimate pain prescriptions under the broad umbrella of “opioid” use is like numbering Persian Gulf war casualties and hunting injuries together under the name “firearms deaths.” It sounds formidable, but it inflates the statistics and blurs the real issues. These are in no way the same problem.
If you’re going to make a point about “70 percent of misused opioid prescriptions” then keep your talk to the abuse of prescriptions, alone, and use legitimate backing statistics instead of vague possibilities. Give people real facts. Of the “5 million” wisdom tooth extractions per year, how many teens actually end up in the potential “opioid addiction” that your Stanford study researches?
Millions of real, responsible, non-abusing health care patients are currently being forced to suffer unnecessary levels of pain because of misguided CDC and health care industry policies that are doing nothing at all to stem the horrific problem of street drug abuse. These policies will only urge denied patients toward street suppliers to give them pain relief, which ultimately criminalizes more people and strengthens illegitimate supply markets and chains.
It’s time to direct resources and energies at the real problem instead of punishing people who rely upon care professionals to help them.
Thanks for the article Mr. Fujimoto. I would like to add that the best way to dispose of your unused opioids is:
1) to not fill & pick up the prescription in the first place.
2) take them to the Līhu’e police station drop box. It is there 24 hours a day 7 days a week. You can anonymously drop any unused medications into this box. Flushing them or throwing them into the trash will only pollute our groundwater.
Aloha Kakou,
Opiates don’t cause opiate addiction if you use the old adage “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” in most cases.
You see doctors’ prescriptions cause opiate addiction.
Doctors give opiates even knowing some of their competitors can provide pain relief and even a correction to the problem, this not requiring prescription refills, by referring patients to chiropractors, physical therapists, massage therapists, acupuncturists, naturopathic doctors, etc.
But no doctors should prescribe a 1/2 a bottle of opiates when only a few pills are needed, or no opiates should be given in the cases where ibuprofen, etc., can relieve the pain.
Dentists will do a root Canal and prescribe a 1/2 bottle of opiates when just a few pain killers will provide comfort from pain for the 1st one or two days, and all that is really needed.
Opiates are more about sell sell sell than pain relief for some doctors and dentists.
Why do some dentists choose removal of non problematic “Wisdom” teeth to prevent future “problems”, so you go in with no problem and come out with an opiate addiction problem?
Does that make sense?
Where’s the sense in removing non problematic God Given Wisdom teeth. Won’t that make the patient less wise when they are older than they are less wise when OK-ing the Wisdom teeth removal ?
Wholistic Dentists advise against Wisdom teeth removal when they are not being problematic, especially when opiates may come into the picture along with the potential for addiction.
“You only need a Root Canal”, is often heard in the dental office. Or maybe, really, NOT.
ROOT CANALS are routinely and unnecessarily given in too many dental offices by the millions nationwide. It’s almost like a conspiracy against teeth.
Root Canals destroy the necessary nutrition providing Dentine Tubules as well as destroys the entire nerve root that inter connects with your brain, and the Root Canal completely kills the tooth, turning it black and needed to be hidden by an expensive Dental Crown, until the dead tooth breaks off at the stump and needs another costly dental procedure, surgical removal of the dead tooth roots, followed by dentures or more expensive dental implants…some of these procedures run the risk of more opiate use and addiction, when a simple filling would have sufficed.
Opiate prescriptions are just like spinning the gambler’s Roulette wheel, you never know when it stops.
Mahalo,
Charles
Thank you, Pointfisha, for adding some clarifying information to the opioid “discussion”.