Opioid Prescription Duration and Refills Are Associated with Postsurgical Opioid Misuse

Surgeons prescribe opioids to relieve pain after surgery, but some patients become chronic opioid users. In this retrospective cohort study, U.S. researchers used a linked medical and pharmacy database to quantify the effects of postsurgical opioid prescribing patterns on opioid misuse in more than 1 million opioid-naive patients who underwent surgery between 2008 and 2016; about 570,000 of these patients received postoperative opioids.

After a median follow-up of 2.7 years, 5900 patients (0.6%) were identified as exhibiting opioid misuse (i.e., opioid dependence, abuse, or overdose). Rate of misuse among patients with one refilled prescription was more than twice that of patients with no refills (293 vs. 145 cases per 100,000 person-years).…