Opioids and CNS depressants: Walking the fine line

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is highly respected in the medical community, but it is, after all, a government agency, and not all of its official pronouncements are particularly newsworthy. At The Update, we try to cover the ones that convey new information we believe has the potential to meaningfully impact the practice of our readers or the well‐being of their patients. By those criteria, the Drug Safety Communication summarized in this month's issue (page 8) wouldn't seem to make the cut. It's titled “FDA urges caution about withholding opioid addiction medications from patients taking benzodiazepines or CNS depressants: careful medication management can reduce risks.”1 Yes, that's a mouthful, but there's nothing in it that's new or surprising — it's what I would be expecting from the routine practice of our average reader.

Source: The Brown University Psychopharmacology Update - December 21, 2017 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Lawrence H. Price Tags: Editor's Commentary Source Type: research