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“In order to improve discharge from hospital after surgery more people are being discharged with supplies of opioids and these may be being continued in the community,” he said. It could also be down to more people buying the drugs online, he added. Roger Knaggs, a pain expert at the RPS, said the rise in patients admitted with poisoning could be mainly attributed to the rise in prescriptions. The Faculty of Pain Medicine (FPM) at the Royal College of Anaesthetists and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) said they were worried about the high and growing use of opioid drugs such as codeine and tramadol. Over the same period prescriptions of opioids have risen steeply but at a slightly lower rate, with the number issued rising from 12m in 2006 to 24m in 2016. Although it should be noted that tramadol was only added to admissions data in 2012. This can result in them ending up in hospital.”Ī 10-year data timeline shows numbers of patients admitted for opioid poisoning have risen year on year since 2005, reaching 12,254 in 2013-14 before dropping the year after, and then rising once again to more than 11,660 last year. She added: “I have also seen patients who are very overweight, have sleep apnoea and are completely inappropriately on high dose opioids who develop respiratory failure due to the combination. Quinlan said: “These figures confirm fears that the increase in opioid prescribing and availability has broader consequences … I have also seen patients taking more opioids than they should because they were desperate to treat their pain, even though we know they are unlikely to be effective some who have taken them as a deliberate suicide attempt – sometimes because of the pain – and some who have become acutely hypersensitive to their normal opioid doses as a result of a chest infection or other infection.” But she noted the figures did not make it clear whether the overdoses related to people with addiction taking drugs not prescribed to them, or whether it was patients prescribed opioids taking too much by accident.
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