Five-year incidence of substance use and mental health diagnoses following exposure to opioids or opioids with benzodiazepines during an emergency department encounter for traumatic injury

Background: Benzodiazepines and opioids are used alone or in conjunction in certain care settings, but each have the potential for misuse. Objective: This longitudinal observational study evaluated substance use and mental health outcomes associated with providing opioids with or without benzodiazepine to treat traumatic injury in the emergency department (ED) setting. Methods: We analyzed a limited dataset obtained through the IBM Watson Health Explorys. Matched cohorts were defined for: 1) patients treated with opioids during the ED encounter (ED-Opioid) vs. neither opioid or benzodiazepine treatment (No medication) (n = 5372); 2) patients treated with opioids and benzodiazepines during the ED encounter (ED-Opioid+Benzodiazepines) vs. No Medication (n = 2454); and 3) ED-Opioid+Benzodiazepines vs. ED-Opioid (n = 2454). Patients consisted of adults with an emergency department encounter in the MetroHealth System (Cleveland, Ohio) with a chief complaint of traumatic injury and medical records for five years following the encounter. Control patients for each cohort were matched to the exposure patients on demographics, body mass index, and residential zip code median income. Outcomes were five-year incidence rates for alcohol, substance use, depression, and anxiety-related diagnoses. Results: Our results indicate that, although receiving opioids during the ED visit predicted a relatively lower likelihood of subsequent substance use and mental health diagnoses, the brief co-use of benzodiazepines was strongly associated with poorer outcomes. Conclusions: Even brief exposure to co-prescribed opioids and benzodiazepines during emergency traumatic injury care may be associated with negative substance use and mental health consequences in the years following the event.