Study Finds That Almost Half of Opioid Prescriptions to U.s. Children and Young Adults Are High-risk

A Pediatrics study assessed the safety, prevalence, and prescribers of opioid prescriptions to U.S. children and young adults aged 0-21 years in 2019. The study, “Opioid Prescribing to U.S. Children and Young Adults in 2019,” published in the September 2021 Pediatrics (published on Aug. 16), analyzed a national prescription dispensing database representing 92% of U.S. pharmacies. The authors found that 4 million opioid prescriptions were dispensed to children and young adults in 2019. Almost half of these prescriptions had “high-risk” patterns that increase the chance of harmful events such as overdose and opioid misuse. For example, 42% of prescriptions to patients new to opioids exceeded a 3-day supply, while 1 in 6 prescriptions to young children aged 0-11 years were for codeine or tramadol even though the FDA has issued a black box warning against using these medications in young children. The authors estimate that 6.3% of U.S. adolescents and young adults were prescribed opioids in 2019.  Dentists and surgeons wrote 60% of the 4 million opioid prescriptions, while the top 5% of prescribers wrote over half. These same “high-frequency” prescribers also wrote over half of all high-risk prescriptions, suggesting that these prescribers potentially should be targeted in efforts to improve the safety of opioid prescribing to children and young adults.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.