Postpartum Opioid Use: Can We Reduce It Safely?

Delivery of an infant is the number one reason for hospital admission in the U.S., where most mothers recovering from a delivery (whether cesarean or vaginal) receive postpartum opioids. For many women, this encounter represents their initial introduction to opioids. Now, researchers have sought to reduce postpartum opioid use without an unacceptable increase in pain by creating a multimodal pain plan consisting of a three-tier treatment system (acetaminophen, oxycodone, and morphine or dilaudid) focused on therapeutic activity goals (e.g., ability to rest comfortably, ability to ambulate with minimal pain) as opposed to numerical pain scores. In cohorts of 6892 women (before implementation of the pain plan) and 7527 women (after implementa…