With a new guide to tapering opioids, federal health officials seek a balanced approach to prescribing
The new guide from federal health officials casts the decision to taper a patient’s opioids as an individualized one that prescribers and patients should reach together.
Federal health officials on Thursday released a guide for clinicians who are considering tapering patients’ opioid prescriptions, highlighting the benefits of safe reductions in dosages while warning against abrupt drops for people who have been on the drugs for long periods.
The recommendations come that some chronic pain patients’ dosages have been unsafely pulled back and that providers have sometimes abandoned patients. Some experts and advocates have warned that overly aggressive reductions or forced cutbacks have led some patients who are dependent on the drugs to seek out illicit sources of opioids or consider suicide.
