Dr. Greg Mancini leads an effort to eliminate the use of addictive drugs hositals give to patients.

University of Tennessee surgeon Dr. Greg Mancini is leading an effort to eliminate the use of addictive drugs that hospitals give to patients following surgery. “While the drugs help control pain they often lead to addiction and dependency,” Mancini says.

Mancini advocates treating patients with alternatives and will present his studies at the Rx Abuse Summit in Atlanta in early April. He will feature on a Panel discussion “Turn Off the Spigot: Opioid Addiction May Start in Acute Care Settings.” Mancini will share statistics on how pain can be better managed and how addiction needs to stop at the hospital.

Preventing opioid related deaths is considered to be the nation’s number one preventable public health problem.

Some states are seeing very high rates of addiction. The Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse reports that of the 4,850,000 adults in Tennessee, an estimated 221,000 (or 4.56%) have used pain relievers, also known as prescription opioids, in the past year for non-medical purposes. Of those adults, an estimated 69,100 are addicted to prescription opioids and require treatment for prescription opioid abuse.

Facts about opioid addiction include:
• Americans consume over 90% of the world’s oxycodone.
• Close to 270 Million prescriptions were written in one year for opioids: controlled prescription abuse costs America $72 billion a year.
• At a recent White House Summit on the opioid epidemic, the Administration said opioid abuse is having a devastating impact on public health and safety in this country.

The consequences of prescription drug abuse in Tennessee include:
1. The number of emergency department visits for prescription drug poisoning has increased by approximately 40% from 2005 to 2010
2. There has been a 220% increase in the number of drug overdose deaths from 1999 to 2012 (342 in 1999 to 1,094 in 2012).
3. Drug-related crimes against property, people and society increased by 33% from 2005 to 2012.
4. The cost of lost productivity due to prescription drug abuse in Tennessee was $142.9 million in 2008. This number adjusted for 2013 inflation is $155.2 million.
5. About 50% of the youth taken into Department of Children’s Services custody resulted from parental drug use.

Dr. Gregory J. Mancini attended medical school at Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon, Georgia. Dr. Mancini moved to Knoxville in 2006 to begin his residency in general surgery at The University of Tennessee Medical Center.