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Labeling Morphine Milligram Equivalents on Opioid Packaging: a Potential Patient Safety Intervention

  • Other Pain (A Kaye and N Vadivelu, Section Editors)
  • Published:
Current Pain and Headache Reports Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose of Review

Given that the primary cause of overdose death in the USA is related to prescribed opioids, one potential strategy to improve awareness and decrease morbidity and/or mortality could include improved labeling. Specific patient populations which significantly struggle with adverse outcomes related to opioid abuse are seen in palliative care, chronic pain, and acute pain treatment settings.

Recent Findings

An unexplored option for improving the healthcare quality and safety for patients currently prescribed opioids would be to require pharmaceutical companies to provide a morphine milligram equivalent (MME) on opioid packaging. Some limitations to MME conversions include equianalgesic conversions being estimates at best and may not account for variations in genetics and pharmacokinetics. Changing opioid labeling requirements is feasible as it falls under the purview of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has been mandated to provide mechanisms to reduce or to minimize overdoses related to opioid prescriptions.

Summary

Labeling opioid packaging with MME per dose will promote clearer communication about opioid strength between patients and physicians. Labeling MME on packaging could help prevent prescriber errors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 75 Francis Street, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Alexander B. Stone & Richard D. Urman

  2. Department of Anesthesiology, Louisiana State University, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Alan D. Kaye

  3. Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Michael C. Grant

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  1. Alexander B. Stone
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  2. Richard D. Urman
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  3. Alan D. Kaye
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Correspondence to Alexander B. Stone.

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Conflict of Interest

Alexander B. Stone, Alan D. Kaye, and Michael C. Grant declare no conflict of interest. Richard D. Urman reports research funding from Mallinckrodt, Merck and Medtronic for unrelated research.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Other Pain

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Stone, A.B., Urman, R.D., Kaye, A.D. et al. Labeling Morphine Milligram Equivalents on Opioid Packaging: a Potential Patient Safety Intervention. Curr Pain Headache Rep 22, 46 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11916-018-0695-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11916-018-0695-3

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