Charlotte, N.C.—Despite recognition of the role that prescription narcotics have in the ongoing opioid crisis and initiatives to prevent overprescribing, physicians may still overestimate patients’ need for narcotic pain control. A case in point is a recent single-center review that found the vast majority of opioids prescribed for patients undergoing skin cancer surgery went unused.
“From 1999 to 2017, the proportion of deaths attributed to prescription