1. Associations Between Physician Prescribing Behavior and Persistent Postoperative Opioid Use Among Cancer Patients Undergoing Curative-intent Surgery
- Author
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Safiya Karim, Yuan Xu, Hude Quan, Winson Y. Cheung, Colleen A. Cuthbert, Brenda R. Hemmelgarn, Ashley Hinther, Joseph C. Dort, May Lynn Quan, and Shiying Kong
- Subjects
Male ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Multivariate analysis ,medicine.medical_treatment ,MEDLINE ,Drug Prescriptions ,Cohort Studies ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Physician prescribing ,Neoplasms ,medicine ,Humans ,Postoperative Period ,Practice Patterns, Physicians' ,Aged ,Pain, Postoperative ,Chemotherapy ,business.industry ,Opioid use ,Cancer ,Odds ratio ,Middle Aged ,medicine.disease ,Drug Utilization ,Surgery ,Analgesics, Opioid ,Opioid ,030220 oncology & carcinogenesis ,Female ,030211 gastroenterology & hepatology ,business ,medicine.drug - Abstract
OBJECTIVE This study aimed to evaluate the association between prescribers' opioid prescribing history and persistent postoperative opioid use in cancer patients undergoing curative-intent surgery. BACKGROUND Study has shown that patients may be over-prescribed analgesics after surgery. However, whether and how the prescriber's opioid prescribing behavior impacts persistent opioid use is unclear. METHODS All adults with a diagnosis of solid cancers who underwent surgery during the study period (2009-2015) in Alberta, Canada and were opioid-naive were included. The key exposure was the historical opioid-prescribing pattern of a patient's most responsible prescriber. The primary outcome was "new persistent postoperative opioid user," was defined as a patient who was opioid-naive before surgery and subsequently filled at least 1 opioid prescription between 60 and 180 days after surgery. RESULTS We identified 24,500 patients. Of these, 2106 (8.6%) patients became a new persistent opioid user after surgery. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that patients with most responsible prescribers that historically prescribed higher daily doses of opioids (≥50 vs
- Published
- 2020
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