NC Policy Watch – A closer look at the mounting toll of fentanyl on the nation’s youth
Fentanyl is now the leading cause of overdose deaths among young people, with a nearly 500% increase in deaths among those aged 25 and under. Learn more.
Opiate Crisis
The Fourth Wave Of The Opiate Crisis
For over two decades, the opioid crisis in the United States has been an urgent health care emergency. Initially driven by over-prescription of pharmaceutical opioids, this has evolved into a “fourth wave” marked by poly-substance use, combining opioids and methamphetamine, resulting in record-high deaths year after year. The Covid-19 pandemic has made the situation even
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Pre-op Cannibis Use Associated More Post-Op Pain, Opiate Use
In an online-first article in Anesthesia News a study presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists found adults who use cannabis have more pain after surgery and consume more opiates than those who don’t use the drug, Elyad Ekrami, MD, a lead author of the study and clinical research fellow
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Former Federal Prosecutor States Opiate Crisis Far Worse…
In his tweet “Things I learned working as an Assistant US Attorney prosecuting violent crime in St Louis, America’s murder capital” former federal prosecutor Will Scharf called out in one fell-swoop the mainstream media for under-reporting, Washington for it’s open border policies, and the Chinese Communist Party for their complicity in the fentanyl epidemic raging
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2022Â CDC Clinical Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Pain
On Thursday, November 3, 2022, the CDC released it’s most recent recommendations for the prescribing of opioids for acute, subacute, and chronic pain. The new guidelines provide 12 recommendations relating to the use of opioids and mostly favor a more individualized approach. However, the CDC issued a guideline much stronger than the 2016 version defining
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A Veritable Quandary?
One of the most common questions we hear from licensed dental healthcare professionals when considering the prospect of dropping their federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) permit is “Can I do that?” The answer is “Yes you can”. Your professional license issued by the state in which you practice affords the ability to conduct patient care
A Veritable Quandary? Read More »
Otolaryngology And Non-Opiate Multimodal Analgesic Therapy
Opiate analgesic use for post-surgical pain is undergoing a lot of scrutiny not only in #dentistry but also in #otolaryngology as evidenced in a recent commentary I helped author regarding the merits of non-opiate multimodal analgesic therapy.
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NC Practitioner Compliance With CSRS
The home/welcome page of the NC Board of Dental Examiners has an interesting post copied from the NC Medical Board’s website. Not too unexpectedly, CSRS is flagging registrants who have been prescribing controlled substances but not reviewing a patient’s CSRS profile. In this post it states: Administrators of the state-run North Carolina Controlled Substances Reporting
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NC CSRS Gateway Integration De-mystified
In 2009 the Obama Administration championed the development of the HITECH Act. Among its many ramifications were the development of “meaningful use” parameters intended to provide financial incentives through health care insurance reimbursement (Medicare, Medicaid) for health care entities to adopt technological advances to make health care more accessible and affordable. The HITECH Act accomplished this through
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Analgesia & COVID Vaccination
NSAIDS May Impair Host Defenses The preference for the use of non-opioid analgesics for pain should now be obvious. However as the option of public COVID-19 vaccination is now widely available in many states, practitioners should be cautioned about the routine use of NSAIDS for pain relief where their treatment may overlap a patient’s vaccination window.(1) NSAIDs inhibit cyclooxygenase (COX) which plays a
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