Federal health officials on Thursday updated their recommendations for using opioids to treat pain, removing specific dose and duration targets that pain experts said had caused unintended harm.
The new guidance, released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reflects the evolution in thinking of how opioids should be used, and the reality of how they are being used. The original guidelines, issued in 2016, helped further drive down opioid prescribing levels that had been in decline since 2012, as the country grappled with its legacy of overprescribing that contributed to the overdose epidemic. But critics contended the 2016 guidelines, while helping limit new prescriptions, introduced other harms by leading to unsafe dose reductions for people already on opioids and some long-term patients being cut off from medication they depended on.