Knee Osteoarthritis, Falls, and Opioids: Interactions and Recommendations

Knee osteoarthritis, a widespread highly painful disabling joint disease is increasingly shown to affect and/or be impacted by an increased falls and injury risk.This brief highlights the current research being published as regards the use of narcotic agents to quell pain in this respect and their possible adverse falls associated implications.To this end, PUBMED and other data base indices were selected to identify information specifically pertaining to the topic using the key words: Falls, Fall Injuries, Knee Osteoarthritis, Opioids, and Pain.Results show a reasonable body of current science based evidence implying opioids should be advocated and used sparingly by older adults with knee osteoarthritis who have fallen or are at risk for falling.Conversely, a failure to identify this risk and a role for other methods of pain relief and mitigation may be expected to produce less than optimal clinical results at best.