CDC Updates Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids

In their new 2022 Clinical Practice Guideline, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides updated evidence and research on the risks and benefits of prescription opioids for acute, subacute, and chronic pain.  These include dosing strategies, tapering and discontinuation, comparisons with nonopioid pain treatments, and risk mitigation strategies.  At 100 pages long, the guideline goes into some detail about the social, economic, and policy factors contributing to high rates of overdose death in rural areas, indicating that an integral part of effective pain treatment is understanding how social determinants of health influence the care provided to patients and the outcomes they experience.