Guiding Aging Long-Term Opioid Therapy Users Into Safer Use Patterns

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Pain, Opioid Use

In brief

Patients on long-term opioid therapy are aging and now face magnified risk of harm with continued high-dose opioid use. These increased risks are due to age-related changes in drug metabolism, multi-morbidity, and polypharmacy. The dominant approach to mitigate these risks is to screen for aberrant patient opioid behaviors so that clinicians can pre-empt misuse early through review of contractual opioid agreements or by lowering patient dosages. By focusing on opioid misuse alone, this strategy encourages forced opioid tapering that is associated with opioid overdose and mental health crisis. Directing clinician attention to the comorbid conditions associated with opioid misuse may promote safer and more effective care. The objective of this study is to assess the comparative effectiveness of PainTracker, a set of questions that targets a broad range of problems associated with pain, in a randomized controlled trial involving 286 Northwestern Medicine clinicians treating Chronic Opioid Use Registry patients (n=1451).

Key facts

Study ID

NCT05808127

Run by

University of Southern California

People needed

286

Starts

2023-08-09

Expected to finish

2024-05-09

Last updated by the study team

2026-04-13

Who can join

Age: 65 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

You may qualify if…

• Patients age 65 or older on long-term opioid therapy within the Northwestern Medicine Chronic Opioid Use registry system with at least one primary care encounter in the past 12 months.

You may not qualify if…

• Patient visits with active cancer diagnoses

Where it is running

• Northwestern Medicine — Chicago, Illinois, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

Trial information comes from ClinicalTrials.gov and is refreshed daily. TrialsForMe does not provide medical care and does not run the studies it lists.