Opioid Analgesic Use and Disposal Following Outpatient Dental Surgery

University of Pennsylvania

Status: Completed

Conditions: Opioid Use Disorders; Tooth Extraction Status Nos

Treatments: Behavioral: Educational; Behavioral: Financial

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02814305

821823

Details and patient eligibility

About

Background: Overdose deaths from prescription opioid analgesics quadrupled from 4,000 cases to nearly 17,000 cases annually during 1999-2011. Most people who misuse or abuse prescription opioids obtain these pills from friends or family members who have surplus medication left over from prior prescriptions. There is little published data on surplus opioid analgesics remaining after patients recover from painful procedures. Even less is known about patients' willingness to dispose of these leftover pills.

Aims: 1) Measure the impact of a risk education intervention and a financial incentive intervention on patients' willingness to dispose of surplus opioids left over after outpatient dental surgery. 2) Measure the number and proportion of opioid pills left unused after outpatient dental surgery.

Methods: The study will be a pilot randomized controlled trial. Adult patients at the Penn Dental Care Center will be enrolled prior to elective outpatient dental surgery. Patients will be randomized to a control group, an educational intervention, or a financial incentive intervention. The primary outcome of the trial is the proportion of patients in each arm that express willingness to return their unused opioids. Secondary outcomes include patient use of prescribed opioids and their number of unused pills. These outcomes will be measured using novel text-message based data collection software that patients will interact with using a web-enabled cellular telephone or tablet.

Enrollment: 79 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Non-institutionalized

Exclusion criteria

• pregnancy
• a history of opioid analgesic misuse/abuse
• ongoing participation in other clinical research
• or daily use of opioid analgesics in the week prior to surgery

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Double Blind

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79 participants in 4 patient groups

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Patient receives neither educational nor financial interventions

Financial intervention only

Experimental group

Description:

Patient receives financial (pharmacy offer) intervention only

Treatment:

Behavioral: Financial

Educational intervention only

Experimental group

Description:

Patient receives educational (narrative) intervention only

Treatment:

Behavioral: Educational

Both interventions

Experimental group

Description:

Patient receives both educational and financial interventions

Treatment:

Behavioral: Financial

Behavioral: Educational