Warning over HUGE rise in use of dangerous opioid painkillers – doctors have handed out £1 BILLION and blamed delays in NHS operations

NHS spending on addictive opioid painkillers has doubled since the pandemic, new analysis shows.

Doctors have doled out almost £1 billion worth of drugs in the past five years, with experts blaming the painful wait for surgery.

The health service distributed £90.1 million worth of medicines in 2019, rising to £186.2 million last year and an expected £189 million this year.

This means spending is on track to reach £1 billion by early next year, according to figures collected by OpenPrescribe.net from the University of Oxford.

It comes as waiting lists for routine NHS care such as hip and knee replacements continue to rise and stood at 7.64 million at the end of August.

The Royal College of Surgeons has warned that hundreds of thousands of patients continue to ‘live in pain on waiting lists’.

Many rely on powerful medications to get by, putting them at risk of developing an addiction that continues even after their surgery.

A recent study found that longer wait times due to Covid lockdowns have increased prescriptions for highly addictive opioids by 40 percent.

One in three people who use prescription painkillers also show signs of addiction, according to recent research from the University of Bristol.

The Emmy-winning TV show Dopesick received critical acclaim last year for its exploration of the opioid crisis in the United States.

It told the story of OxyContin, a codeine-containing painkiller that led to mass addiction and hundreds of thousands of deaths in America.

Opioids, including codeine, morphine, oxycodone, and tramadol, can provide very effective pain relief when used short-term.

But patients waiting months for NHS operations end up taking the painkillers for dangerously long periods of time and becoming addicted to them.

Professor Patrice Forget, leader of opioid research at the University of Aberdeen, said: ‘We need to overhaul the way they are prescribed by better supporting people when they are in pain, but not by prolonging prescriptions because that doesn’t work.

‘We need to reinvent the way we support people.

‘It is not ridiculous to use opioids such as tramadol after surgery, carefully for a purpose, such as walking the dog, for a short period of time.

‘But it’s not good for a long period of time while waiting for surgery or after surgery.

‘After the pandemic, opioid use will increase by 5 to 10 percent per year.

‘This has clearly continued to increase over the last two or three years.

‘It is very significant and we cannot say that this problem has been controlled or mitigated. It clearly continues to rise.’

Married father-of-two Alan Duggan, 59, from Glasgow, started using opioids while on a four-year delay for a much-needed hip replacement.

He said: ‘The hip pain affected every aspect of my life, I couldn’t work all day, I couldn’t sleep well and I had to stop playing golf.

‘I fell several times because my balance was disturbed and I walked with a severe limp.

‘Initially I took paracetamol for the pain, then cocodamol, I tried dihydrocodeine and coproxamol.

‘Ultimately tramadol and this supplemented with naproxen and amitryptiline.’

Ultimately, he opted for the €7,800 hip operation at a clinic in Kaunas, Lithuania, and within two weeks the pain was completely gone, but he was still addicted to tramadol.

He said: ‘It was difficult to come off tramadol. I had to go to my GP for help and it took about three months to reduce the dose, reducing it by 50mg less per week.

‘I’m doing well now, but I’m incredibly wary of taking strong painkillers.’

Anne, 60, from Norwich, started taking painkillers after an accident in 2016.

She says: ‘I started using tramadol on the advice of my doctor. It made my head a little fuzzy, but it made the job livable.

‘I was given a repeat prescription and there was no advice or notification that it would be difficult to stop.

‘I had no idea I had become addicted. I couldn’t sleep and at one point I didn’t nap for 36 hours.

‘The withdrawal made me tremble and give me a strange buzzing feeling in my brain. I suffered from severe anxiety, I was nervous and my brain was buzzing in strange loops of thought.

‘Eventually I had to go to my GP and he gradually reduced the dose, but it took six to seven weeks.

‘It’s an incredibly dangerous drug and withdrawal was a very unpleasant feeling.’

Dr. Sarunas Tarasevicius, a surgeon at the Nordorthopedic Clinic in Lithuania, which has proven popular with British health tourists, said: ‘As waiting lists in Britain remain high for medical procedures, many patients are experiencing pain and atrophy, and some are taking dangerous drugs. and addictive painkillers.

“If the waiting time for surgery becomes very long, the use of painkillers, especially opioids, is also prolonged, which affects the psychological state of patients due to the developed addiction.”

A spokesperson for the Royal College of Surgeons of England said: ‘Increased use of opioids to manage pain is another consequence of long waiting times.

‘This illustrates how poor access to NHS treatment is causing problems for patients and increasing costs for the NHS.

‘It is critical that healthcare professionals closely monitor the risks associated with increased opioid use, especially dependence, and regularly review ongoing prescriptions.’