Anesthesia Coding Alert

Click to read the full warning

The FDA recently released a warning on methadone used for pain management services. An excerpt from the release reads:

"FDA has reviewed reports of death and life-threatening adverse events such as respiratory depression and cardiac arrhythmias in patients receiving methadone. These adverse effects are the possible result of unintentional methadone overdoses, drug interactions and methadone's cardiac toxicities. ... Physicians prescribing methadone should be familiar with methadone's toxicities and unique pharmaceutical properties. Methadone's elimination half-life (8-59 hours) is longer than its duration of analgesic action (4-8 hours). ... Physicians should closely monitor patients when converting them from other opioids and changing the methadone dose, and thoroughly instruct the patients how to take methadone."

To read the complete release, visit the FDA site www.fda.gov/cder/drug/InfoSheets/HCP/methadoneHCP.pdf.