Regional Anesthesia and Acute Pain ManagementRegional Anesthesia and Acute Pain Management1993-65082687-1394Eco-Vector9002610.17816/RA90026EditorialOpioid Epidemic: Diagnosed, Started on Treatment?OvechkinAlexei M.<p>MD, PhD</p>ovechkin_alexei@mail.ruhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-3453-8699I.M.Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University (Sechenov University)15042021152971000912202109122021Copyright © 2021, Eco-Vector2021<p>In the March 2021 issue of the journal Pharmacoepidemiology Drug Safety, an article by K. Bykov et al. was published, which contains an analysis of the use of opioid and non-opioid analgesics in US clinics in the period 20072017. According to the authors, the frequency of use of drugs in this group does not tend to decrease, despite the previously announced opioid epidemic in the USA. In Russia, the problem of the emergence of opioid dependence due to the perioperative use of drugs of this group is of little relevance. The existing legal restrictions on the prescription of opioid analgesics minimize this risk. But these same limitations make the idea of opioid-free analgesia very attractive in our country.</p>opioid analgesicsopioid free analgesiaопиоидные анальгетикибезопиоидная анальгезия[Sun E, Darnall B, Baker L, Maskey S. Incidence of and risk factors for chronic opioid use among opioid-naive patients in the postoperative period. JAMA Intern.Med. 2016;176(9):1286–1293.][Wheeler M, Oderda G, Ashburn M. Adverse events associated with postoperative opiod analgesia: a systemic review. J.Pain. 2002;3:159–180.][Oderda G, Evans S, Lloyd J. Cost of opioid-related adverse drug events in surgical patients. J.Pain Symptom Manage. 2003;25: 276–283][Bykov K, Patorno E, Franklin J, Vine S, Bateman B. Postoperative inpatient utilization of opioid and opioid-sparing analgesics in the United States hospitals, 2007-2017. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf. 2021;30(3):390–394.][Ovechkin AM, Bayalieva AZh, Ezhevskaya AA, Eremenko AA, Zabolotskij DV, Zabolotskikh IB, Karelov AE, Koryachkin VA, Spasova AP, Khoronenko VE, Uvarov DN, Ulrikh GE, Shadrin RV. Postoperative analgesia. Guidelines. Vestnik intensivnoy terapii im A.I. Saltanova. 2019;4:9–33.]