Which Surgery Patients Don't Stop Taking Opioids When They Should?

The first time many patients in the United States take prescription opioid painkillers is following surgery. But not everyone puts away the pills: In a new study, researchers found that 6 percent of patients continued to use the drugs for at least three months after surgery. The researchers wanted to know more about why some people continue to use the drugs while others don’t, so they looked at the types of surgery people had. But it turned out that it didn’t matter whether someone had a major operation, such as bariatric surgery or a hysterectomy, or a minor procedure, such as varicose vein removal; there was no difference in how likely people were to continue to use opioids past the three-month mark. [Costly, Deadly, Complicated: These 7 Surgeries Take the Biggest Toll] However, the findings showed that the people who were more likely to continue to use the painkillers were those who smoked, drank alcohol, had certain mood disorders or had chronic pain. The findings suggest that whether a person continues to take prescription painkillers long after his or her surgery “is not due to surgical pain but addressable patient-level” risk factors, the researchers wrote in the study. In the study, a team of researchers led by Dr. Chad Brummett, an associate professor of pain management anesthesia at the University of Michigan Medical School, looked at data on more than 36,000 patients who received opioid painkillers after surgery in 2013 and 2014 but had not ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news