Benedictis Lippi*, Zrinski Topic, Lenicek Krleza, Mannisto T Anetor, Yenice Pillay

ABSTRACT

This exploratory pilot study examined the occurrence of medication-seeking behaviour among primary care patients presenting with pain-related complaints. A total of 56 individuals were reviewed, consisting of those prescribed either codeine–acetaminophen (C–A) (n = 39) or tramadol–acetaminophen (T–A) (n = 17). The audit aimed to generate preliminary hypotheses regarding how often drug-seeking patterns appeared following these prescriptions. Overall, such behaviours were observed significantly more frequently in patients who received C–A compared with those prescribed T–A (p = 0.01). No statistically meaningful differences were identified between the two prescription groups with respect to demographic or clinical features—including age, sex, previous exposure to codeine-based products, primary reason for the visit, employment or disability status, motor-vehicle or workplace injury, chronic pain diagnoses, attendance with specialist providers, or co-existing psychiatric conditions (all p > 0.05). Within the C–A group, younger adults appeared somewhat more likely to display drug-seeking tendencies, although this trend did not reach significance (p = 0.19), and stratified age analysis did not show a clear association.