The use of opioids has increased by around 25 per cent in Ireland. <\/p>\n
Research from the Royal College of Surgeons has found a sharp increase in the use of prescription pain medication between 2014 and 2022.<\/p>\n
Prescriptions for paracetamol rose by 50 per cent, while codeine and stronger opioids increased by even higher percentages.<\/p>\n
The prescribing of pain medications by doctors has risen “significantly” in recent years, and is now outpacing England, according to the research. <\/p>\n
The study looked at figures from 2014 to 2022 for those with a medical card, and compared it with data from GP practices in England.<\/p>\n
The use of opioids rose 25 per cent in Ireland in that time, while specific medicines like codeine and oxycodone increased by even higher amounts.<\/p>\n
Frank Moriarty, Associate Professor at the RCSI, said this comes with risks. <\/p>\n
Prof Moriarty said: “These medications can when used long-term lead to the development of dependence and other side effects that can have an impact on patients’ lives. <\/p>\n
“It’s really important that in treating pain there are a variety of options available to patients to avail of and potentially reduce use of these dependence-forming medications.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The use of opioids has increased by around 25 per cent in Ireland. Research from the Royal College…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[64,63,137,490],"class_list":{"0":"post-50559","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-medication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}