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Opioid Treatment for Chronic Back Pain and Its Association with Addiction
- Meredith Noble, MS; and
- Karen Schoelles, MD, SM
- From ECRI Institute Evidence-based Practice Center and Health Technology Assessment Group, Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462.
TO THE EDITOR:
The poor quality and limited generalizability of the 9 studies included in Martell and colleagues' (1) assessment of substance abuse or addiction prevalence among patients with chronic back pain limits the applicability of their findings to clinical practice. The authors acknowledge some of these limitations in their paper. We will draw attention to additional problems and propose an alternative method for estimating abuse or addiction risk among individuals taking opioids for chronic back pain.
First, many of the studies determined prevalence of substance abuse or addiction in populations that are likely to have higher …
