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A quarter of the adults who went to hospital emergency departments with sprained ankles were prescribed opioid painkillers, a study shows, in another sign of how commonly physicians turn to narcotics for even minor injuries. The state-by-state review revealed wide variation in the use of opioids for the sprains, from 40 percent in Arkansas to 2.8 percent in North Dakota. All but one of the nine states that recorded above-average opioid prescribing are in the South or Southwest. None is in the parts of Appalachia or New England that have been hit hardest by the opioid epidemic. (Bernstein, 7/27)

Many states have responded to the national opioid epidemic by limiting how many pain pills doctors can prescribe, contributing to the decline in opioid prescriptions filled at pharmacies across the country. But a Penn study, published Tuesday in Annals of Emergency Medicine, suggests that to truly tackle the opioid epidemic that has strained communities like Philadelphia, states may need a more granular approach. “Previous studies were sort of the 30,000-foot view. It’s very hard to figure out what’s the underlying problem,” said M. Kit Delgado, an assistant professor of emergency medicine and epidemiology at Penn and the study’s lead author. “Now, when you limit it to specific conditions, such as a minor injury or all patients that got opioids after a specific type of surgery, we can better understand if there’s still variation or a lot of prescribing.” (Gantz, 7/24)