Trends in Prescription Opioid Use in Motor Vehicle Crash Injuries in the United States: 2014–2018

Lan Jin (), Sten H. Vermund and Yawei Zhang
Additional contact information
Lan Jin: Department of Neurosurgery, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06510, USA
Sten H. Vermund: Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06510, USA
Yawei Zhang: National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer/Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing 100021, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 21, 1-10

Abstract: Motor vehicle crashes (MVC) cause over three million people to be nonfatally injured each year in the United States alone. We investigated trends and patterns in prescription opioid usage among nonfatal MVC injuries in 50 states in the US and the District of Columbia from 2014 to 2018. All emergency department visits for an MVC event ( N = 142,204) were identified from the IBM ® MarketScan ® Databases. Using log-binomial regression models, we investigated whether the prevalence of prescription opioids in MVC injuries varied temporally, spatially, or by enrollees’ characteristics. Adjusting for age, relationship to the primary beneficiary, employment status, geographic region, and residence in metropolitan statistical area, the prevalence decreased by 5% (95% CI: 2–8%) in 2015, 18% (95% CI: 15–20%) in 2016, 31% (95% CI: 28–33%) in 2017, and 49% (95% CI: 46–51%) in 2018, compared to 2014. Moreover, the prevalence decreased by 28% (95% CI: 26–29%) after the publication of the CDC Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain. Spatial variations were observed in the prevalence and temporal trend of prevalence. The decreasing trend in the prevalence of prescription opioids in MVC is consistent with the decrease in the dispensing rate of opioids and the percentage of high-dosage opioids in the study population.

Keywords: opioids; motor vehicle crash; trends; United States; non-fatal injury; emergency visits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/21/14445/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/21/14445/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:21:p:14445-:d:963079

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().