Who Is Prescribing Opioids Preoperatively? A Survey of New Patients Presenting to Tertiary Care Adult Reconstruction Clinics.

This study aims to identify the prevalence of preoperative opioid prescriptions and the specialty and practice setting of the prescriber, as well as the percentage of patients who do not report their opioid prescriptions and any variables associated with preoperative opioid prescriptions. METHODS: A total of 461 consecutive new patients evaluated for an arthritic hip or knee were retrospectively studied using institutional data from a tertiary-care, urban center at a university-affiliated private-practice and the state Prescription Monitoring Program to identify opioid prescriptions (including medication, number of pills and dosage, refills, prescriber specialty, and practice setting) within 6 months before their first appointment. Demographic data included age, sex, ethnicity, body mass index, joint, laterality, diagnosis, Charlson Comorbidity Index, duration of symptoms, decision to have surgery, number of days from the first visit to surgery, smoking status, alcohol use, mental health diagnoses, preoperative outcome scores, nonopioid medications, and opioid medications. Patients were separated into opioid and nonopioid cohorts (opioid receivers were further subdivided into those who reported their opioid prescription and those who did not) for statistical analysis to analyze demographic differences using t-tests and Mann-Whitney U tests for continuous variables, the Fisher exact test for categorical variables, and multivariate logistic regression. RESULTS: ...
Source: The Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons - Category: Orthopaedics Tags: J Am Acad Orthop Surg Source Type: research