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Quality Improvement: Is There a Benefit in Opioid-Sparing Strategies for Management of Postoperative Pain?

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Difficult Decisions in Colorectal Surgery

Abstract

Post-operative pain is the most common complaint in surgical patients [1]. Poorly controlled post-operative pain is implicated in many adverse events such as cardiopulmonary complications, opioid overdose, hospital readmissions, prolonged hospital length of stay, and development of chronic pain or opioid addiction [2]. Opioid analgesics have been readily employed since the 1990s, but their rampant use have fueled the recent opioid crisis [3]. Death rates due to opioid overdose have quadrupled since 1999, half of which involve prescription opioids [4]. Of these, a third have been prescribed in the context of a surgical procedure, where many patients received their initial exposure to narcotics [5]. Considering this current state of medicine, it is imperative to pursue opioid-sparing strategies for postoperative analgesia.

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Correspondence to Allen T. Yu .

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Yu, A.T., Huang, A.L., Khaitov, S. (2023). Quality Improvement: Is There a Benefit in Opioid-Sparing Strategies for Management of Postoperative Pain?. In: Umanskiy, K., Hyman, N. (eds) Difficult Decisions in Colorectal Surgery. Difficult Decisions in Surgery: An Evidence-Based Approach. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42303-1_48

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42303-1_48

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