Scientific Poster Session IV: Students Research-in-Progress

Abstract

Research Question or Hypothesis: What ratio or ratios should be used when converting patients with complex pain from a full opioid agonist to buprenorphine?

Study Design: Retrospective, single center study of hospitalized patients seen by the palliative care service who received full opioid agonist and were rotated to milligram dosing of buprenorphine.

Methods: Adult and pediatric patients seen by the palliative care consult services and rotated to milligram dosing buprenorphine from 01/01/2015 to 08/31/2023 will be included. Patients with active or a history of opioid use disorder will be excluded. The primary outcome of the study is the conversion ratio from full agonist opioid to stable dose of buprenorphine. Patient-reported adverse events will also be collected. Full agonist opioid use, stable buprenorphine dose (same dose for = 48 hours or upon discharge), and pain reports will be collected. The institutional electronic data warehouse will be queried for patients meeting the above criteria. A patient list will be abstracted and entered into the Electronic Medical Record Search Engine (EMERSE), which searches clinical notes for natural language processing. Descriptive statistics will be used to characterize the data and provide the conversion ratio data. Those with different pain states (e.g. nociplastic, mixed) will be compared univariably for differences in age, sex, race, and baseline opioid use.

Results: One-hundred and seven patients were included in the initial dataset. Further results will be presented at the meeting.

Conclusion: Final results of this study are expected to provide more clear dosing information for providers who switch patients with complex pain from full opioid agonists to buprenorphine.

Presenting Author

Authors