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FRIDAY, Sept. 14, 2018 (HealthDay News) — For patients undergoing rhinoplasty, postoperative opioid refills are extremely rare, according to a research letter published online Sept. 6 in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Rosh K.V. Sethi, M.D., M.P.H., from Harvard Medical School in Boston, and colleagues conducted a retrospective review of 173 patients who underwent rhinoplasty to examine opioid prescription data, including type of opioid, quantity, dosage, and refills within three weeks of surgery.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that 97.1 percent of the patients were prescribed opioids in addition to acetaminophen. Per patient, a mean of 28 tablets were prescribed. Of the 168 patients prescribed an opioid, 87.5 percent received oxycodone and 7.1, 4.2, 0.6, and 0.6 percent were prescribed oxycodone-acetaminophen, hydrocodone-acetaminophen, acetaminophen-codeine, and tramadol, respectively. Narcotic prescriptions were not filled by 11.3 percent of patients. Within three weeks of surgery, refills were rare (1.2 percent); of the two patients requiring refills, one was prescribed 40 oxycodone tablets and one was prescribed five oxycodone-acetaminophen tablets.<\/p>\n
“With the current opioid epidemic, the onus is on surgeons to critically examine postoperative pain management practices,” the authors write. “The near-negligible refill rate of prescriptions in the present study, confirmed by the Massachusetts State Registry database, suggests that the optimal number of tablets may be lower than expected.”<\/p>\n
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