Abstract
BACKGROUND
In this scoping review, we identified and reviewed 23 original articles from the PubMed database that investigated the relationship between nonacute opioid use (NOU) and cardiovascular outcomes.
METHODS AND RESULTS
We defined NOU to include both long-term opioid therapy and opioid use disorder. We summarized the association between NOU and 5 classes of cardiovascular disease, including infective endocarditis, coronary heart disease (including myocardial infarction), congestive heart failure, cardiac arrythmia (including cardiac arrest), and stroke. The most commonly studied outcomes were coronary heart disease and infective endocarditis. There was generally consistent evidence of a positive association between community prevalence of injection drug use (with opioids being the most commonly injected type of drug) and community prevalence of infective endocarditis, and between (primarily medically indicated) NOU and myocardial infarction. There was less consensus about the relationship between NOU and congestive heart failure, cardiac arrhythmia, and stroke.
CONCLUSIONS
There is a dearth of high-quality evidence on the relationship between NOU and cardiovascular disease. Innovative approaches to the assessment of opioid exposure over extended periods of time will be required to address this need.
Document Type
Review
Publication Date
7-2-2021
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1161/jaha.121.021260
Repository Citation
Singleton, Jade H.; Abner, Erin L.; Akpunonu, Peter D.; and Kucharska-Newton, Anna M., "Association of Nonacute Opioid Use and Cardiovascular Diseases: A Scoping Review of the Literature" (2021). Epidemiology and Environmental Health Faculty Publications. 90.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/epidemiology_facpub/90
Supplemental material
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Journal of the American Heart Association, v. 10, no. 13, e021260.
Copyright © 2021 The Authors
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