EVIDENCE LIBRARY
Korean Pain Cohort Linked Benzodiazepine or Z-Drug Use With Long-Term Opioid Prescribing
A longitudinal administrative study found that sedative-hypnotic use marked a population more likely to receive long-term opioids. Its mortality result concerned a different exposure comparison.
A longitudinal administrative study found that sedative-hypnotic use marked a population more likely to receive long-term opioids. Its mortality result concerned a different exposure comparison.
Two related analyses
The study described increasing long-term opioid prescribing among people with chronic noncancer pain. Benzodiazepine or Z-drug use was among the characteristics associated with long-term opioid use.
A separate analysis associated long-term opioid use with higher ten-year all-cause mortality compared with opioid-naive patients. That estimate was not a benzodiazepine-specific mortality effect.
Avoid transferring the estimate
Pain severity, disability, comorbidity, prescribing indication, and unrecorded lifestyle factors can influence both treatment and outcome. The authors identified missing pain-severity information as a limitation.
The paper cannot establish that benzodiazepines caused opioid continuation or assign the opioid mortality ratio to a benzodiazepine prescription. A forensic summary should keep the two research questions separate and retain the definitions of long-term use, recorded prescribing, and all-cause mortality rather than interpreting every death as overdose.
Source paper
Original analysis of the supplied journal article, identified as PMC9304910.