Opioid-related emergency admissions in people with opioid dependence/use disorder with and without sickle cell disease: An analysis of multi-state insurance claims.

Liu SA, Brown TR, King AA, Lin LA, Rehman SS, Grucza RA, Xu KY. Opioid-related emergency admissions in people with opioid dependence/use disorder with and without sickle cell disease: An analysis of multi-state insurance claims. General hospital psychiatry. 2024 Sep 24; 91:83-88.

Dimensions for VA is a web-based tool available to VA staff that enables detailed searches of published research and research projects.

If you have VA-Intranet access, click here for more information vaww.hsrd.research.va.gov/dimensions/

VA staff not currently on the VA network can access Dimensions by registering for an account using their VA email address.    Search Dimensions for VA for this citation
* Don't have VA-internal network access or a VA email address? Try searching the free-to-the-public version of Dimensions

Search for Abstract from PubMed

---

Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: We estimated rates of opioid-related admissions in people with sickle cell disease (SCD) diagnosed with opioid-related disorders. METHOD: We analyzed ten years (1/2006-12/2016) of multi-state claims data from 191,638 people receiving treatment for opioid-related disorders in the U.S. We used multivariable cox regression to estimate the association between admissions for opioid-related adverse events after initiating treatment and SCD status (SCD[n  =  320] vs no SCD[n  =  191,318]) among people with opioid-related disorders, controlling for sociodemographic variables and comorbidities. In secondary analyses, we excluded events occurring simultaneously as vaso-occlusive crises (VOCs) and computed rates of admissions for non-opioid substance-related events (i.e., alcohol, cannabis). RESULTS: Whereas 287(90 %) of the SCD cohort had > 1 all-cause admission, of which 199 were for VOCs, only 78(20 %) experienced an opioid-related adverse event. The SCD cohort experienced higher rates of opioid-related admissions than the non-SCD cohort (aHR  =  1.82[95 % CI  =  1.51-2.19), a finding that remained robust even after excluding events that occurred at the same time as a VOC. SCD diagnoses were not associated with admissions for non-opioid substance-related events. CONCLUSIONS: Even though clinicians may perceive people with SCD as being at elevated risk for substance use disorders, opioid-related admissions made up only a small fraction of all-cause admissions among people with SCD diagnosed with opioid-related disorders, in contrast to VOCs that comprised the majority of admissions. Opioid-related admissions, while modestly higher among those with SCD than among peers without SCD, were relatively uncommon.