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Abstract
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I appreciated your recent paper by Yeo et al., which mentions a number of helpful interventions and urges a multifaceted public health approach to control the complicated U.S. opioid crisis. In the past 20 years, U.S. overdose deaths have skyrocketed by more than 5-fold from about 19,000 a year in 2001 to over 100,000 year in 2021. Over 70% of these deaths have involved opioids, many of them synthetic opioids like fentanyl.
A major, but often overlooked, factor in the opioid epidemic involves workplace injuries. A 2012 Utah study reported that 145 out of 254 (57%) residents who died of opioid overdoses had experienced at least one major workplace-related injury. Opioid-related deaths are especially high in industries with high rates of musculoskeletal injuries such as construction and farming/fishing/forestry. Several studies have reported that about 40% of workers experience chronic pain.
In the military, non fatal combat injuries have been associated with increased opioid use and abuse. One study of 9,284 battle-injured U.S. military personnel with no prior history of opioid abuse reported that 631 personnel (6.8%) developed clinical recognized opioid abuse with a median time of 3 years post-injury to diagnose. Non-combat-related injuries are also very common and are probably related to opioid abuse. Non-combat U.S. Army musculoskeletal injuries also account for over 2 million outpatient encounters annually and account for 65% of soldiers who can not deploy for medical reasons...
Language: en |