In a specialty clinic study of patients receiving high-dose opioids (defined as 90 MME/day or more) for chronic pain, 44.6% of patients referred for tapering successfully reduced their dose below 90 MME/day, while another 18.8% who could not taper transitioned to sublingual buprenorphine.
Notes on verification
Confirmed by multiple independent sources including the primary peer-reviewed study (Sturgeon et al., Pain Medicine 2020), its abstract pages, and CDC training materials citing the same data. [tier=gold indep_score=0.867 clusters=3 claim_tier=notable]
Sources
- CDC Clinical Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Pain (seed:health_and_medicine)
- https://www.ovid.com/journals/pnmed/abstract/10.1093/pm/pnaa029~outcomes-in-long-term-opioid-tapering-and-buprenorphine?redirectionsource=fulltextview (corroboration)
- https://academic.oup.com/painmedicine/article-abstract/21/12/3635/5803927 (corroboration)
- https://www.cdc.gov/overdose-prevention/hcp/training-modules/tapering/page1263411.html (corroboration)