Immediate release fentanyl in general practices: Mostly off-label prescribing

Figures & data

Figure 1. Flowchart of patients who were prescribed an immediate release fentanyl (IRF) in 2019.

Table 1. Patient characteristics of patients who at least received one IRF in 2019.

	Patient with at least 1	Patients without an IRF	Total patient population
	IRF (n = 1,368)	(n = 1,296,574)	(n = 1,297,942)
Sex	n (%)	n (%)	n (%)
Male	565 (41.3)	642,504 (49.6)	643,069 (49.6)
Female	803 (58.7)	654,070 (50.5)	654,873 (50.5)
Age category
<18 years	1 (0.1)	233,580 (18.0)	233,581 (18.0)
18–49 years	122 (8.9)	502,684 (38.8)	502,806 (38.7)
50–59 years	179 (13.1)	198,770 (15.3)	198,949 (15.3)
60–69 years	282 (20.6)	168,639 (13.0)	168,921 (13.0)
70–79 years	343 (25.1)	126,407 (9.8)	168,921 (9.8)
80–89 years	305 (22.3)	56,178 (4.3)	56,483 (4.4)
90 + years	136 (9.9)	10,316 (0.8)	10,452 (0.8)

Table 2. Prevalence of contra-indications in patients with an IRF.

	N (%)
Respiratory comorbidities
COPD	153 (11.2)
Asthma	63 (4.6)
COPD and asthma	3 (0.2)
No asthma or COPD	1,149 (84.0)
Opioid naive
Yes	191 (14.0)
No	1,177 (86.0)

Table 3. Number of prescriptions, by category off-label per medication episode.

	Off-label	On-label	Total^a
Number of prescriptions
1 Prescription	600 (57.0)	127 (48.5)	766 (56.0)
2–3 Prescriptions	233 (22.1)	79 (30.2)	320 (23.4)
4–5 Prescriptions	58 (5.5)	26 (9.9)	86 (6.3)
6 Or more prescriptions	162 (15.4)	30 (11.5)	196 (14.3)
Mean number of prescriptions (SD)	3.4 (5.2)	2.8 (3.2)	3.2 (4.9)

^aAlso include patients with unknown off/on-label prescription.

Table

ICPC-1 code
A79	Malignancy NOS
B72	Hodgkin’s disease/lymphoma
B73	Leukaemia
B74	Malignant neoplasm blood other
D74	Malignant neoplasm stomach
D75	Malignant neoplasm colon/rectum
D76	Malignant neoplasm pancreas
D77	Malignant digestive neoplasm, other/NOS
L71	Malignant neoplasm musculoskeletal
N74	Malignant neoplasm nervous system
R84	Malignant neoplasm bronchus/lung
R85	Malignant neoplasm respiratory other
S77	Malignant neoplasm of skin
T71	Malignant neoplasm thyroid
U75	Malignant neoplasm of kidney
U76	Malignant neoplasm of bladder
U77	Malignant neoplasm urinary other
W72	Malignant neoplasm related to pregnancy
X75	Malignant neoplasm cervix
X76	Malignant neoplasm breast female
X77	Malignant neoplasm genital female other
Y77	Malignant neoplasm prostate
Y78	Malignant neoplasm male genital other