Dental care of patients with substance abuse

Patients who abuse alcohol, crack, heroin or prescription drugs, are likely to interact with the dental professional. The dentist should therefore be able to identify problems of abuse and provide informed care and referral. Substance abuse should be a consideration in all patients who present with dental trauma and those who present with frequent vague complaints, multiple pain medication allergies, and regimens with multiple narcotic medications. Polydrug use, either prescription or illicit, is also a possibility, and effective treatment requires prompt recognition. Dentists should be alert to drug-seeking behavior within the context of pain management, and because pain severity is an objective experience, each patient must be treated carefully and sensitively. Unrelieved or unremitting pain can be a relapse trigger and therefore adequate pain control is a necessity in the recovering chemically dependent patient. New modalities, such as coanalgesia with low-dose ketamine in the opioid addicted have been shown to work effectively. In the post-dental surgical patient with chemical dependency, agents with less psychoactive activity than their drugs of abuse, such as extended-release morphine (MS Contin) have been tried with variable success. An informed treatment plan includes recognition of substance abuse, appropriate intervention, and referral. This plan may include universal screening, followed by brief interventional therapy for positive patients and in some cases, pharmacological pain control. On discharge from the office, instructions concerning referral to a substance abuse program or, in the case of the patient who may require more immediate treatment, to the emergency department are important.