Leftover Prescription Opioids Pose a Great Risk to Kids

Leftover prescription opioids can pose significant risks to children, yet most parents keep their own and their kid's unused painkillers even after they're no longer medically needed for pain, reports a new study. The findings of the study are published in the journal Pediatrics.

But a new University of Michigan study suggests that convenient disposal paired with tailored risk education can improve those numbers.

Drug Detox – Alcohol, Opioid, Nicotine Detoxification
Drug detoxification (or drug detox) is a process that helps drug addicts to give up drugs with less or no withdrawal symptoms.

‘Leftover opioids pose the risk of poisoning and death for kids. The only way to completely avoid this risk is to get rid of leftovers as soon as possible.’

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Terri Voepel-Lewis, U-M associate professor of nursing, and colleagues, found that prompt disposal of leftover medications improved if parents received a disposal packet at the time the medications were prescribed. Further, parents who saw tailored online messages about the risks opioids pose to children and teens were less likely to report that they intended to keep leftover medications.

The study included 517 parents of children ages 7-17 who were prescribed a short course of opioids. Parents were placed in one of three groups: some received a take-home pill disposal packet; some received the packet and an interactive web-based program asking them to make opioid dosing decisions for their children in different real-life scenarios, and some received neither intervention.

Of the parents, 93% had leftover medications, but only 19% in the control group promptly disposed of them. However, prompt disposal doubled (38.5%) for parents who received both interventions.

Drugs That Can Make You Feel Tired
Drugs administered to cure a medical condition can cause fatigue. In such cases, consult a doctor who will identify the drug, and replace it or reduce its dose.

Further, the number of parents in the web intervention group who planned to keep leftover opioids was half the number in the control group. Higher risk perception lowered the odds of parents keeping the leftover opioids, while parental past opioid misuse increased them.

The takeaway for prescribers is that the best way to improve prompt disposal rates is to give parents a simple way to dispose of the drugs, paired with information that boosts their understanding of the risk that keeping leftover medications poses to their children.

Prescription Drug Abuse
Prescription drug abuse is consuming prescription medications in a way different from that as prescribed by the doctor. It is becoming a colossal health problem which can lead to addiction and even death.

Several findings in the study surprised the researchers, Voepel-Lewis said.

"The high rate of parental misuse (11.8%) was a surprise--and that this and past retention behaviors were so predictive of intention to keep the drug around," she said. "This is something that prescribers need to know and assess for."

Risk of Opioid Overdose is More Post-medical Treatment
Opioid addiction patients are at increased risk of overdose after ending drug treatment with the buprenorphine.

Nor did the team expect that intention-to-dispose rates would be as high, given past findings, Voepel-Lewis said.

"We believe that the opioid crisis awareness in our community may have falsely increased parents' reports of intention to dispose of, knowing that many people in Michigan have died from an accidental overdose," she said.

Though prescribing rates have recently decreased for opioids, leftover medications are still common for opioids and other risky drugs, like sedatives and stimulants.

"Many hospitals are now beginning to give disposal packets, mostly marketed and costly ones, with opioids," Voepel-Lewis said. "They are not doing this with other risky drugs, and the risk enhancement information is lacking. We will make our educational information available at the end of our studies."

Source-Eurekalert