Among adolescents and young adults, dental opioid prescriptions written for pain management of third molar extractions, may be associated with subsequent opioid use and abuse. This according to a retrospective cohort study that examined the association between index dental opioid prescriptions from dental clinics for opioid-naïve adolescents and young adults in 2015 and new persistent use and subsequent diagnosis of abuse in this population. Among the findings:

• Among 754,002 individuals with continuous enrollment in 2015, 97,462 patients (12.9%) received ≥1 opioid prescriptions, of whom 29,791 (30.6%) received prescriptions supplied by a dental clinician.
• Index opioid prescriptions in opioid-naïve adolescents and young adults were associated with a statistically significant 6.8% absolute risk increase in persistent opioid use and a 5.4% increase in the subsequent diagnosis of opioid abuse.
• There was only 1 death in each cohort.