The latest recommendations expand on the agency’s 2016 guideline and addresses pain management, dosing strategies, tapering and discontinuation, alternative nonopioid treatments, and risk mitigation.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released an updated guideline for prescribing opioids for pain management to improve communication and between clinicians and patients in the decision-making process of opioid use for pain care as well as offer person-centered flexibility.
The 100-page guideline was developed using the best available evidence as well as expert consultation, including a federal advisory committee, four peer reviewers, and community members. Feedback from patients, caregivers, and clinicians was also considered.
“The recommendations are voluntary and provide flexibility to clinicians and patients to support individualized, patient-centered care,” noted the CDC in the announcement. “They should not be used as an inflexible, one-size-fits-all policy or law or applied as a rigid standard of care or to replace clinical judgement about personalized treatment.”
The 2022 guideline, CDC Clinical Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Pain, consists of 12 recommendations that fall into four key areas:
- Determining whether to initiate opioids for pain
- Selecting opioids and determining appropriate dosages
- Deciding the duration of initial opioid prescription and conducting follow-up
- Assessing risk and addressing potential harms
The updated guideline also places a greater emphasis on social determinants of health (SDoH), with the CDC underscoring the need to understand the role SDoH play in patient outcomes as well as access to quality health care. The guideline also notes the SDoH-related factors linked to increased rates of overdose deaths throughout rural and low-income communities.
“An integral part of providing access to and delivery of high-quality health care, including pain treatment, is understanding how the social determinants of health influence the health care provided and the differential outcomes observed. Social, economic, educational, and neighborhood-level factors might create and exacerbate health inequities that certain persons experience throughout their lives,” the agency wrote, calling for increased efforts throughout the health care system.
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“This begins with raising awareness and acknowledging the presence of these inequities, strengthening patient-clinician communication, leveraging community health workers, implementing multidisciplinary care teams, tracking and monitoring performance measures, and integrating quality improvement initiatives that support and invest in guideline-concordant care for all persons.”
The final version of the CDC’s 2022 guideline is currently in review with the American Academy of Family Physicians.