National trends in opioid-related hospitalizations among patients with cancer.

199Background: Cancer patients are routinely prescribed opioids for cancer-related pain. With recent attention to the opioid epidemic, we sought to identify risk factors and to describe the incidence of opioid-related hospitalizations among cancer patients. Methods: Serial cross-sectional study of adult cancer patients with opioid-related hospitalizations using the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database from January 2006 to December 2014. We identified cancer patients using the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) codes. We defined opioid-related hospitalizations as ICD-9 codes for heroin poisoning, opioid poisoning, or opioid dependence or abuse in the primary diagnosis field. A logistic regression model identified predictors for opioid-related hospitalizations. We adjusted temporal trends for opioid-related hospitalizations for all-cause hospitalizations among cancer patients. Results: Among 25,443,362 hospitalizations for cancer patients, there were 14,336 opioid-related h...