Comparing Opioid Prescription Patterns in Total Joint Arthroplasty Patients

• Status: Completed
• Trial end date: 2018-08-26
• Target enrollment: 0
• Participant gender: All

Summary

The United States constitutes <5% of the world's population but over 80% of the opioid supply and 99% of the hydrocodone supply. In 2014, there were 18,893 deaths from prescription drug overdose, and orthopaedic surgeons are the third highest prescribing physicians for opioids. Surgeons often prescribe opioids to minimize postoperative pain and to reduce the likelihood of readmission for pain. Available data suggests that orthopaedic surgeons are the most likely physicians to prescribe opioids to Medicare patients, whose opioid prescriptions are over 7 times more likely to come from an orthopaedic surgeon than another type of physician, but orthopaedic surgeons also had the highest readmission rate for post-operative pain. Many studies have investigated the utilization of opioids after surgery to assess surgeon's tendencies to overprescribe, demographics of those likely to overuse, and adverse events of opioid abusers.

The primary purpose of this randomized controlled trial is to determine whether prescribing fewer opioid pills per prescription reduces the total amount of opioids taken, even while allowing equal total opioid availability via increased frequency of prescription availability.

• Phase: Phase 4
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers?: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Details

• Lead Sponsor: Rush University Medical Center
• Treatments: Analgesics, Opioid

Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

• any patient > 18 years of age scheduled for primary total hip or knee arthroplasty who is not consuming opioids during the 4 weeks prior to surgery

Exclusion Criteria:

• patients consuming opioids during the 4 weeks prior to surgery

• patients who are allergic to oxycodone or refuse to take oxycodone

• patients with a history of opioid dependence or illegal or "off-label" opioid use

• patients undergoing a revision total knee or total hip arthroplasty

• any patient less than 18 years of age