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Prescribing narcotic analgesics after low-risk ambulatory surgery is often appropriate, but the longer-term management of such drug use may not be. In this Canadian retrospective cohort study, researchers examined opioid prescribing for 390,000 opioid-naive patients (age ≥66) who underwent short-stay surgery (cataract surgery, cholecystectomy, transurethral prostate resection, or varicose vein stripping).
About 28,000 patients (7%) received postoperative opioid prescriptions (ranging from 5% of cataract patients to 65% of cholecystectomy patients). About 2800 of these patients received at least one opioid prescription within the 4-month time frame extending between 10 and 14 months after the surgical procedure. In analyses adjusted for demog…