Fewer Opioids Being Prescribed for Low Back Pain in the Emergency Department
FRIDAY, July 18, 2025 -- From 2016 to 2022, 5.3 percent of all U.S. emergency department visits were related to low back pain, with opioid administration and prescription decreasing during this same time period, according to a study published online July 12 in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
Anuva Fellner, M.P.H., and Howard S. Kim, M.D., both from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, conducted a cross-sectional study of the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) from 2016 to 2022 to identify emergency department visits with a back pain-related reason. NHAMCS sampling weights were used to produce national estimates of usual diagnostic and therapeutic care variables.
The researchers found an estimated 52.8 million emergency department visits for low back pain from 2016 to 2022, accounting for 5.3 percent of all emergency department visits. Among emergency department visits for back pain, the mean numeric pain score was 7.2 out of 10. Overall, 13.7 percent of visits arrived by ambulance and 40.4 percent were related to injury/trauma. Opioids were administered or prescribed in 35.0 and 32.5 percent of visits for back pain, respectively, in 2016, and in 24.5 and 13.5 percent of visits in 2022, respectively. In 39.4 percent of emergency department visits, X-rays were obtained. In those aged 75 years and older, opioid prescribing and X-rays were most prevalent.
"The decline in opioid prescribing shows physicians are responding to evidence and changing their practice at a time of growing awareness of the opioid epidemic," Kim said in a statement.
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