Mental health comorbidities increase the rates of opioid use and mortality among breast cancer survivors on endocrine therapy, based on a retrospective study of more than 10,000 patients in a Medicare-linked database.
Screen for mental health conditions in the early stages of cancer care and lean toward opioid alternatives for pain management, advised lead author Raj Desai, MS, of the University of Florida, Gainesville, and colleagues.
“The complex relationship among breast cancer, mental health problems, and the use of opioids is not well understood, despite the high prevalence of mental health comorbidities like depression and anxiety in breast cancer survivors, and the high rate of opioid use in those on AET [adjuvant endocrine therapy],” the investigators wrote in the Journal of Oncology Practice.
“Therefore, this study aimed to determine whether breast cancer survivors with varying levels of mental health comorbidities, such as depression and anxiety, are more likely to use opioids for AET-related pain,” they added.
The study involved 10,452 breast cancer survivors who first filled an AET prescription from 2006 to 2012 and had follow-up records available for at least 2 years. All patients had a diagnosis of incident, primary, hormone receptor–positive, stage I-III breast cancer. Data were drawn from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results–Medicare linked database. Records were evaluated for diagnoses of mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety, opioid use, and survival.
Analysis showed that the most common mental health conditions were depression and anxiety, diagnosed in 554 and 246 women, respectively. Patients with mental health comorbidities were compared with patients who did not have such problems, using both unmatched and matched cohorts. While unmatched comparison for opioid use was not statistically significant, matched comparison showed that survivors with mental health comorbidities were 33% more likely to use opioids than those without mental health comorbidities (95% confidence interval, 1.06-1.68). Similarly, greater adjusted probabilities of opioid use were reported in the mental health comorbidity cohort (72.5% vs. 66.9%; P = .01).
Concerning survival, unmatched comparison revealed a 44% higher risk of death among women with depression and a 32% increase associated with anxiety. Matched comparison showed an even higher increased risk of mortality among women with any mental health comorbidity (49%; P less than .05).
The investigators concluded that opioid use among breast cancer survivors with mental health comorbidities “remains a significant problem.”
“A need exists for collaborative care in the management of mental health comorbidities in women with breast cancer, which could improve symptoms, adherence to treatment, and recovery from these mental conditions,” the investigators wrote. “Mental health treatments also are recommended to be offered in primary care, which not only would be convenient for patients, but also would reduce the stigma associated with treatments for mental health comorbidities and improve the patient-provider relationship.”
The investigators reported financial relationships with Merck.
SOURCE: Desai R et al. J Oncol Pract. 2019 Jul 19. doi: 10.1200/JOP.18.00781.