By Roger Chriss, Guest Columnist

The New England Journal of Medicine recently published a study called “Opioid-Prescribing Patterns of Emergency Physicians and Risk of Long-Term Use.” It looked retrospectively at Medicare patients and found that some emergency room physicians prescribed up to three times more opioids than others did.

The article did not even mention words such as “abuse” or “addiction” in any context. Moreover, the data was for the period between 2008 and 2011, long before the 2016 CDC opioid guidelines or the various efforts by the FDA, DEA and state governments to restrict opioid prescribing.

The result of this study has been a surprising explosion of fake news about the opioid crisis. It is almost ironic that the spread of this news looks more like an epidemic than the actual opioid crisis does.

The New York Times published the article "Long-Term Opioid Use Could Depend on the Doctor Who First Prescribed It” on February 15, marking the first step in the outbreak of this new opioid meme.

The article noted that the study looked at elderly people in the opening paragraph, but did not mention the decline in opioid prescribing between the study period and the present.

Moreover, the article stated that "as the opioid epidemic continues to devastate communities around the country, the study was the latest attempt to identify a starting point on the path to excessive use.” This was stated despite the fact that all the study showed is that people who take opioids are more likely to become dependent or addicted to them. Clearly this result is both axiomatic and not a priori interesting.

A day later there were more articles, such as “Physicians’ opioid prescribing patterns linked to patients’ risk for long-term drug use” from the Harvard School of Public Health and “How Long You Stay On Opioids May Depend On The Doctor You See In the E.R.” from the Kaiser Family Foundation.  

Both articles add more drama to the study’s results, though each does mention that the study was done on Medicare patients. Oddly, the Harvard article waited until almost the very end to tell us that, as if this is an incidental point with respect to the study and its results.

On February 16, the fake news took a turn toward the dramatic and dire. The Chicago Tribune came up with an article called "Your ER doctor could determine your likelihood of long-term opioid use."  We are told that "physicians are often reluctant to change treatment regimens when patients are happy with what they have,” as an explanation for why doctors were resisting not prescribing opioids.

Vox took the fake news to a whole new level with an article called "Certain doctors are more likely to create opioid addicts. Understanding why is key to solving the crisis."  The Vox reporter provides a quote from the lead author of the study:

“'For patients, Barnett said the message is clear: “Patients should ask their physicians, ‘What are the side effects of me taking this opioid and do you think my pain could be treated effectively [another way], because I know how dangerous these medicines can be."

Opioids have now become dangerous medications.

Now imagine that the first headline from The New York Times had said “Medicare Patients Receive Different Amounts of Pain Medication depending on ER Physician.” That would be a fair a description of what was reported in the original NEJM article.

And consider this alternate interpretation of The Chicago Tribune quote about happy patients: These patients are elderly, at low-risk of addiction, and being treated successfully with a well-known medication. This is not something to worry about, especially since the opioid crisis is being driven by illicit substances used primarily by younger people and outside of medical settings.

Forgotten in all of this reporting is the data from the CDC and other government agencies, which clearly shows that opioid prescribing is down considerably compared to just a few years ago, while at the same time the number of overdoses and deaths involving opioids used illicitly has risen.

The data also shows that most people who abuse opioids are young, not elderly. In other words, physician prescribing is not a major driver in the opioid crisis and Medicare patients are not representative of substance abusers at all.

In a matter of days, an article in a respected medical journal describing a retrospective study of the Medicare population has morphed into some doctors being more likely than others to create opioid addicts and unlucky patients are getting hooked.

This is an epidemic spread of fake news, of a dangerous meme, and of a new challenge for chronic and intractable pain patients. Accurate information is the best defense, but that takes work.

Roger Chriss suffers from Ehlers Danlos syndrome. Roger is from Washington state, where he works as a technical consultant who specializes in mathematics and research.

Pain News Network invites other readers to share their stories with us.  Send them to:  editor@PainNewsNetwork.org. 

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.