Dental Association Joins Fight Against Opioid Epidemic,
Guess They Finally Got the Memo

It’s always good news when another major national organization joins the fight against America’s opioid epidemic. When that organization has members who prescribe opioids, that group has a real chance to take effective action in this fight. In April 2018, the American Dental Association (ADA) stepped up by publicly advising their members to limit or eliminate prescriptions for the opioids that have already addicted millions of Americans.

Specifically, the ADA advised dentists to drop opioid painkillers from their usual arsenals of pain relief tools for their patients and utilize state-sponsored prescription drug monitoring programs to detect any drug-seeking patients. They were also advised to follow guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and prescribe no more than seven day’s worth of painkillers if they are prescribed at all.

It’s a very good move by the ADA to get publicly involved in fighting America’s problem with opioid misuse and addiction. While it’s well known that medical doctors may be prone to overprescribing, it’s not as broadly known that dentists may also prescribe too many pills, leading some people to develop a taste for the warm, mellow fuzziness that accompanies their use.

In the ADA’s announcement, Dr. Joseph Crowley, the ADA’s president, stated, “I call upon dentists everywhere to double down on their efforts to prevent opioids from harming our patients and their families.“

Teens, Wisdom Teeth and Opioids

No one wants patients to be in pain after a serious dental procedure. But in a New York Times article on dentists revising their post-procedure prescribing to eliminate opioids, Dr. Harold Tu noted that when he stopped prescribing opioids to patients, no one seemed to mind.

Dr. Tu decided on his own to make this change after realizing that many of the people losing their lives to opioid overdoses were young—in their late teens and early 20s—the exact age range that many people go to the dentist to have wisdom teeth removed.

Dr. Tu turned his realization into action at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry. He developed a mandatory protocol to be taught to all dental students and those treating patients at the school. Pain relief was to start with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen and only move on to opioids if it was absolutely necessary. “We have not seen an increase in patient complaints or patients returning to say, ’the NSAIDs are not working; I need something stronger,’” he told the newspaper.

It’s only been in the last few years that the dental aspect of opioid addiction came to light. A study from 2016 found that more than half of the 100 million pain pills prescribed after dental extractions go unused. Five days after surgery, the study found, most patients had little pain, but they had plenty of unused pills. For many teens getting wisdom teeth pulled, this visit to the dentist might be the first time a young person is exposed to these potent drugs.

In 2017, medical insurance giant Aetna announced that it would start reimbursing dental wisdom tooth patients for a non-opioid painkiller as a way of helping to join the fight against opioid addiction.

Eliminating addiction to opioids will take many, many actions like these. It wasn’t just one small change that set us on this road to massive loss of life. It was many small and not-so-small factors like changes in hospital policies and legislation and aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical corporations. We will have to reverse and implement many more changes like these to prevent people from having access to too many pills that look a little too tempting when they have a setback in life. It will take many thousands of us working together to reverse this problem and, as a result, save tens of thousands of lives every year.