Objectives
To characterise short-term and long-term opioid prescription patterns after cardiac
surgery.
Design, Setting and Participants
We obtained data from a single Australian tertiary hospital from November 2012 to
July 2019 and included 2,205 patients who underwent a primary cardiac surgical procedure.
Main Outcome and Measures
The primary outcome was the dose of opioids at hospital discharge. Secondary outcomes
included factors associated with high dose opioid prescriptions and persistent opioids
use after cardiac surgery.
Results
Overall, 76.4% of study patients were prescribed opioids at hospital discharge, with
a median discharge prescription of 150 mg oral morphine equivalents. Moreover, 52.8%
of discharge opioid prescriptions were as slow-release formulations and 60.0% of all
discharge prescriptions were for patients who had received no opioids the day before
discharge. In the subset of our patients with long-term data, 14.0% were still receiving
opioids at 3–12 months after cardiac surgery.
Conclusions
In cardiac surgical patients, opioid prescriptions at discharge were common, most
were at higher than recommended doses and more than half were slow-release formulations.
Such prescription was associated with one in seven patients continuing to receive
opioids 3–12 months after surgery.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: October 14, 2021
Accepted:
August 20,
2021
Received in revised form:
August 12,
2021
Received:
July 3,
2021
Identification
Copyright
© 2021 Australian and New Zealand Society of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgeons (ANZSCTS) and the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand (CSANZ). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
