By Roger Chriss, Guest Columnist

Numbers can be impressive. They seem like powerful evidence or useful metrics in regulations and legislation.

In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued its guidelines for opioid prescribing, setting a recommended daily limit on opioid doses at 90 morphine milligram equivalent (MME). Now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is on the cusp of adopting that number as a requirement for Medicare recipients. Physicians around the country have already started using it and so has the Veterans Administration.

In addition, Maine has passed a state law with a maximum 100 MME allowed for opioid prescribing starting on July 1, 2017. New Jersey, Virginia and other states are also passing laws restricting opioid prescribing by dose or duration, often citing the CDC guidelines as justification. 

But this number is all but arbitrary. The CDC guidelines recognize that the 90 MME ceiling was based on limited evidence. Obviously, patients are not safe at either 80 MME or doomed at 100 MME.

Nor can this number be used to calculate the safe number of days or doses for an opioid prescription. It is a magical number. And magical numbers can lead to magical thinking.

In fact, the 90 MME from the CDC cannot even be reliably calculated. The CDC offers an app that allows physicians to calculate the 90 MME. Its basic methodology is described here. Web sites like Practical Pain Management also offer an opioid calculator, and third-party developers have created opioid conversion apps.

But it turns out that the results of these calculators are inconsistent. Dr. Jeffery Fudin and his students have shown that the various methods of calculating MME produce significantly different outcomes.

Thus, how much of a morphine equivalent dose an individual is actually allowed to receive depends on which method is used. This uncertainty makes the 90 MME level clinically less than meaningful and potentially dangerous.

Existing research does show an increased risk of addiction and overdose as the daily dose of an opioid medication rises. But this is exactly what we should see. Most substances are more dangerous in larger quantities, after all. But each patient is different: gender, age, health status, prior opioid exposure, and other factors all play a significant role in determining a safe and effective dose of an opioid medication.

A cutoff like 90 MME is at best arbitrary. At worst it leaves some patients undertreated, and may harm patients who are forced to taper to the 90 MME threshold from a higher dose that has been safe and effective for them.

In addition, it is not entirely clear how the magic number of 90 MME was determined. The CDC developed its guidelines in a largely closed-door process that involved outside consultants whose identity was not revealed at the time. Most magical numbers are like this: their justification is thin and often obscured.

Meanwhile, the CMS and states like New Jersey and Maine are ignoring more important numbers. A recent STAT News article reported that opioid prescriptions have been falling since 2012 and that the misuse of pain relievers bottomed out in 2014. In other words, opioid prescribing is no longer a driving factor in the opioid crisis -- street drugs are.

The magical number of 90 MME is simply not justified. The relative risk of prescription opioids, in particular for people with chronic or intractable pain, is quite low. This fact was ignored in the CDC guidelines and in state government regulation. But it should be obvious: Most Americans have taken opioids at some point in their lives, whether after trauma or surgery or as a part of dental care. And it is abundantly clear that the majority have not become addicted to opioids. Again, the magic number is not real.

On February 9, 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy gave a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, claiming that the U.S. State Department was infested with Communists, specifically 205 of them. This number helped launch a wave of political repression, fear-mongering, and social paranoia that we now refer to as McCarthyism. Nothing good came of that era, except maybe a cautionary note about how magical numbers can contribute to tragic results.

We are facing a similar risk with opioids, a magical number motivated by magical thinking by regulators and policymakers -- none of which is likely to help address the opioid crisis or the tragedy of addiction.

Instead, millions of people who may benefit from short-term opioid therapy after trauma or surgery will be denied effective medication for pain management, and tens of thousands of people with chronic conditions for whom opioid therapy is a critical component in maintaining a reasonable quality of life will be harmed. These are real numbers that we really need to pain attention to.

Roger Chriss suffers from Ehlers Danlos syndrome. Roger is from Washington state, where he works as a technical consultant who specializes in mathematics and research.

Pain News Network invites other readers to share their stories with us.  Send them to:  editor@PainNewsNetwork.org. 

The information in this column should not be considered as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. It is for informational purposes only and represents the author’s opinions alone. It does not inherently express or reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of Pain News Network.