Prolonged opioid use may be common after trauma surgery
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Key takeaways:
- Results showed 10.5% of patients overall and 6.1% of opioid-naïve patients had prolonged opioid use after trauma surgery.
- Preoperative opioid use was significantly associated with risk of prolonged opioid use.
Published results showed 10.5% of patients who underwent surgery for a tibial shaft fracture between January 2016 and June 2020 had prolonged opioid use, with an increased risk for patients who used opioids preoperatively.
Zakaria Chakrani, BA, from the Leni and Peter W. May Department of Orthopaedics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and colleagues retrospectively analyzed data from 2,475 patients who underwent open reduction and internal fixation of a tibial shaft fracture from January 2016 to June 2020.
Overall, 10.5% of patients (n = 259) had prolonged opioid use, which was defined as filling an opioid prescription between 91 and 180 days after surgery. Among the 1,958 patients who were opioid naïve prior to surgery, 6.1% (n = 119) had prolonged opioid use.
Chakrani and colleagues noted preoperative opioid use (OR = 4.76), perioperative oral morphine equivalents in the fourth vs. first quartile (OR = 2.68), alcohol or substance use disorder (OR = 1.66) and age (OR = 1.03) were significantly associated with increased risk of prolonged opioid use.
“Shared risk factors exist between the opioid-naive and opioid-tolerant subgroups that can guide clinical decision-making,” Chakrani and colleagues wrote in the study. “The identified factors can inform patient counseling and guidelines for multimodal pain management,” they concluded.
Collapse
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts