A Simple Approach to Reduce the Amount of Unused Prescribed Opioids Left Over in the Home :

Unused prescription opioids in the home can easily be diverted for nonmedical purposes. One common strategy to reduce this risk is to limit the number of pills that are prescribed. Another way is introduced to us by Adler et al (10.1542/peds.2019-2449) in a study being early released in our journal this week. The authors share with us a feasibility study to determine if parents of children receiving an opioid prescription for their child following pediatric surgery would return unused medication through a mail-back envelope given to them at the time of discharge from the surgery. The authors describe over 300 patients given these envelopes and found that by educating families about the dangers of left-over opioids, and then giving them a pre-paid and pre-addressed envelope to return unused opioids, followed by an email reminder 2 weeks later, they received just under 20% (n=64) envelopes. These contained more than 2 liters of liquid and over 250 tablets (nearly 3,000 mg oral morphine equivalents) –opioids that would not be left around the house for others to access for nonmedical reasons. While there are limitations in the study, such as we do not know how much medicine was left over in any of the homes, this simple painless procedure still decreased the number of opioids left in some homes. Would you try something like this? We welcome your thoughts on this simple feasibility study by sharing a comment with this blog or with the article on our website, or simply sharing your thoughts about this study on our Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram sites.