Introduction: Analgesics are among the most widely used drugs worldwide. This study describes the population treated with narcotic analgesics, their therapeutic indications and how the data have evolved over a decade.
Methods: A cross-sectional, national, multicentre survey study was conducted that included surveys taken every year from 2007 to 2019 in a national sample of 1500 randomly selected dispensing pharmacies.
Results: The mean age of patients, mostly women (around 60%), remained stable over the study period (63.2 ± 17.1 years in 2007, 68.2 ± 17.2 years in 2019). The proportion of patients treated for more than 3 months increased from 2007 to 2019. Most prescriptions involved morphine, oxycodone and fentanyl (98.5% of all prescriptions in 2019). Morphine prescriptions dropped dramatically from 49.6% (2007) to 32.3% (2019) of the total narcotic analgesics. Fentanyl prescriptions varied from 40.1% in 2007 to 32.2% in 2019. Prescriptions of oxycodone, regardless of the indication, increased steadily from 2007, from 8.3 to 34% in 2019, becoming the most prescribed narcotic analgesic for the first time since the beginning of the survey.
Conclusions: This study demonstrates how narcotic opioids are prescribed, thanks to the active participation of health professionals, and confirms the striking increase in the prescription of oxycodone.
© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.