Papers of the Week

Several pain management guidelines recommend regular urine drug testing (UDT) in patients who are being treated with chronic opioid analgesic therapy (COAT) to monitor compliance and improve safety. Guidelines also recommend more frequent testing in patients who are at high risk of adverse events related to COAT; however, there is no consensus on how to identify high-risk patients or on the testing frequency that should be used. Using previously described clinical risk factors for UDT results that are inconsistent with the prescribed COAT, we developed a web-based tool to adjust drug testing frequency in patients treated with COAT.