Trends in potentially abused medications returned during medication take-back days

Unused medicine take-back programmes: a systematic review

Background

Improper disposal of unused medicine can impact the environment causing significant healthcare and financial burdens. While the medicine take-back programme is an effective management strategy, its effectiveness differs across countries. This study aimed to systematically review the take-back programmes in various countries and to identify areas needing improvement for programme enhancement.

Methods

We conducted searches in Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar, from database inception to June 2023.

Results

The review included 27 studies spanning 15 countries' medicine take-back programmes. While some programmes, mostly observed in the USA, were conducted at the local level with non-health-associated facilities, others were done at the national level within healthcare facilities. The cost of collected medicines ranged from US$7,416 to US$1,118,020, primarily involving medicines related to the nervous system, cardiovascular system, alimentary tract, and metabolism. Legislations pertaining to these programmes were available in the USA, most European countries, and Mexico, but unavailable in Spain, Austria, Australia, and New Zealand. However, despite this, the government or the industry in these countries managed the programmes.

Conclusion

Well-structured take-back programmes featuring easily accessible collection points, regular collection schedules, clear programme ownership, with legislation defining financial responsibilities, showed positive outcomes.

Evaluating a health system-wide opioid disposal intervention distributing home-disposal bags

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate a health system-wide intervention distributing free home-disposal bags to surgery patients prescribed opioids.

DATA SOURCES AND STUDY SETTING

We collected patient surveys and electronic medical record data at an academic health system.

STUDY DESIGN

We conducted a prospective observational study. The bags were primarily distributed at pharmacies, though pharmacists delivered bags to some patients. The primary outcome was disposal of leftover opioids (effectiveness). Secondary outcomes were patient willingness to dispose and factors associated with disposal (effectiveness), recalling receipt of the bag (reach), and recalling receipt of bags and disposal over time (maintenance). We used a modified Poisson regression to evaluate the relative risk of disposal. Inverse probability of treatment weighting, based on propensity scores, was used to account for differences between survey responders and non-responders and reduce nonresponse bias.

DATA COLLECTION/EXTRACTION METHODS

From August 2020 to May 2021, we surveyed patients 2 weeks after discharge (allowing for home opioid use). Eligibility criteria were age ≥18, English being primary language, valid email address, hospitalization ≤30 days, discharge home, and an opioid prescription sent to a system pharmacy.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

We identified 5134 patients with 2174 completing the survey (response rate 42.3%). Among respondents, 1375 (63.8%) recalled receiving the disposal bag. Among 1075 respondents with leftover opioids, 284 (26.4%) disposed, 552 (51.3%) planned to dispose, 79 (7.4%) did not plan to dispose, 69 (6.4%) had undecided, and 91 (8.5%) had not considered disposal. Recalling receipt of the bag (incidence rate ratio [IRR] 1.25, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.13-1.37) was positively associated with disposal. Patients who used opioids in the last year were less likely to dispose (IRR 0.82, 95% CI 0.73-0.93). Disposal rates remained stable over the study period while recalling receipt of bags trended up.

CONCLUSIONS

A pragmatic implementation of a disposal intervention resulted in lower disposal rates than prior trials.

Primary prevention of prescription opioid diversion: a systematic review of medication disposal interventions

Background: In the U.S., 50-75% of nonmedical users of prescription opioids obtain their pills through diversion by friends or relatives. Increasing disposal of unused opioid prescriptions is a fundamental primary prevention strategy in combatting the opioid epidemic.Objectives: To identify interventions for disposal of unused opioid pills and assess the evidence of their effectiveness on disposal-related outcomes.Methods: A search of four electronic databases was conducted (October 2019). We included all empirical studies, systematic literature reviews, and meta-analyses about study medication disposal interventions in the U.S. Studies of disposal interventions that did not include opioids were excluded. We abstracted data for the selected articles to describe the study design, and outcomes. Further, we assessed the quality of each study using the NIH Study Quality Assessment Tools.Results: We identified 25 articles that met our inclusion criteria. None of the 13 studies on drug take-back events or the two studies on donation boxes could draw conclusions about their effectiveness. Although studies on educational interventions found positive effects on knowledge acquisition, they did not find differences in disposal rates. Two randomized controlled trials on drug disposal bags found higher opioid disposal rates in their intervention arms compared to the control arms (57.1% vs 28.6% and 33.3%, p = .01; and 85.7% vs 64.9%, p = .03).Conclusions: Peer-reviewed publications on opioid disposal interventions are limited and either do not address effectiveness or have conflicting findings. Future research should address these limitations and further evaluate implementation and cost-effectiveness.

Opioid use in children's surgery: Awareness, current state, and advocacy

In response to the ongoing opioid epidemic, many surgeons who care for children have reflected upon current practices and the history of our own prescribing. In this editorial review, we provide a brief summary of the origins of opioid use in medicine and surgery, we describe how the ongoing opioid epidemic specifically impacts children and adolescents, and we explore contemporary efforts underway to facilitate evidence-based opioid prescribing. Resources for pediatric surgeons including national guidelines related to safe opioid prescribing and web-based toolkits that may be used to implement change locally are highlighted. The goal of the present manuscript is to introduce opioid stewardship as a guiding principle in pediatric surgery. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: LEVEL V (Expert opinion).