Pain Scores, Age Can Help Identify Patients More Likely to Use Few or No Opioids After Surgery
Penn Medicine News
From Penn Medicine News:
“At face value, it seems quite simple that asking patients about their pain and use of pain medicine would help inform what we do, but it is often easy to lose sight of the value of these patient-informed moments,” said first author Anish Agarwal, MD, an assistant professor of Emergency Medicine and the deputy director of the Penn Medicine Center for Insights to Outcomes. “These are simple data points, but they could be used in a high impact way to help manage pain, tailor prescribing, and support clinicians who are trying to better balance the risks of opioids while addressing expected pain following surgery.”
The study, co-led by Kit Delgado, MD, an associate professor of emergency medicine and epidemiology and the director of the Penn Medicine Nudge Unit and co-chair of the Penn Medicine Opioid Task Force, used data collected through automated text messages sent to approximately 3,600 patients who had one of the 30 most common surgical procedures at the University of Pennsylvania Health System. Mostly, these surgeries fell under the umbrella of orthopaedic (such as hip or knee procedures) or neurosurgery (spine or back procedures).