Hamina, Aleksi and Odsbu, Ingvild and Borchgrevink, Petter Christian and Chen, Li-Chia and Clausen, Thomas and Espnes, Ketil Arne and Gjesdal, Kine and Handal, Marte and Hartikainen, Sirpa and Hjellvik, Vidar and Holter, Marianne Therese Smogeli and Høibø, Trond and Kurita, Geana Paula and Langaas, Harald Christian and Lid, Torgeir Gilje and Nøst, Torunn Hatlen and Sjøgren, Per and Skurtveit, Svetlana (2022) Cohort description: preventing an opioid epidemic in Norway - focusing on treatment of chronic pain (POINT) - a national registry-based study. Clinical Epidemiology, 14, pp. 1477-1486. https://doi.org/10.2147/CLEP.S382136.
External website: https://www.dovepress.com/cohort-description-preve...
AIM: The POINT project aims to provide evidence to optimise chronic pain management, prevent adverse consequences of opioids, and improve chronic pain patients' pain relief, functional capacity, and quality of life. We describe the outline of the project and its work packages. More specifically, we describe a cohort of persons with chronic pain and a cohort of long-term opioid users identified from a national registry linkage.
DATA SOURCES: The project utilises data from nationwide healthcare and population registers in Norway. Using the Norwegian Prescription Database, we identified a cohort of persons who have been dispensed drugs reimbursed for chronic pain and a cohort of persons who used opioids long term from 2010 to 2019. Data from the Norwegian Registry for Primary Health Care and the Norwegian Patient Registry (2008-2019), Cancer Registry (1990-2018) Cause of Death Registry (2010-2019) and demographic and socioeconomic registers from Statistics Norway (2010-2019) were linked to the cohorts.
STUDY POPULATION: There were 568,869 participants with chronic pain. Sixty-three percent of the cohort was women, and the mean age was 57.1 years. There were 336,712 long-term opioid users (58.6% women; 60.9 years). In chronic pain and long-term opioid user cohorts, the most frequent musculoskeletal diagnosis was back pain diagnosed in primary care (27.6% and 30.7%). Psychiatric diagnoses were also common.
MAIN VARIABLES: Upcoming studies will utilise psychiatric and somatic diagnoses from the patient registers, drug use from the prescription register, causes of death, demographics, and socioeconomic status (eg, education, income, workability, immigrant status) as exposures or outcomes.
CONCLUSION AND FUTURE PLANS: The two cohorts have numerous pain-related diagnoses, especially in the musculoskeletal system, and noticeably frequent somatic and psychiatric morbidity. The POINT project also includes later work packages that explore prescriber and patient perspectives around safe and effective treatment of chronic pain.
E Concepts in biomedical areas > Medical substance > Prescription drug (medicine / medication)
J Health care, prevention, harm reduction and treatment > Risk and protective factors > Risk factors
J Health care, prevention, harm reduction and treatment > Patient / client care management
J Health care, prevention, harm reduction and treatment > Treatment and maintenance > Treatment issues (pain management)
VA Geographic area > Europe > Norway
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