ArticleJournal of thoracic disease2024
Opioid use in thoracic surgery: a retrospective study on postoperative complications.
Article in Journal of thoracic disease, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Effect of erector spinae block on postoperative outcomes in patients undergoing lung surgical procedures: a systematic review and trial sequential analysis of randomized controlled trials.BMC anesthesiology · 2026Pooled it
- Effect of ERAS-based refined nursing on postoperative pain management in lung cancer surgery patients.Frontiers in surgery · 2026Article
- Is a Perioperative Opioid-Sparing Anesthesia-Analgesia Strategy Feasible in Open Thoracotomies? Findings from a Retrospective Matched Cohort Study.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Opioids are important medications that are used to control postoperative pain. The enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) program has reduced opioid use after surgery. In a surgical practice with a robust ERAS program, we wanted to determine if there was a relationship between in-hospital opioid use and postoperative complications. Methods: We performed a retrospective nested case-control study of patients who underwent thoracic surgical intervention at the Houston Methodist Hospital (HMH) between 11/2020 and 11/2021 from the thoracic surgery database with hospital morphine milligram equivalent (MME) information, comparing patients who did and did not experience postoperative complications. We determined the total MME and average daily MME patients received during their hospitalization. We performed receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis with the Youden index to determine the optimal cutoff points for total MME and daily MME. We performed univariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses of the factors associated with postoperative complications. Results: A total of 419 patients were included who were mostly female (59%) and white (75%). Most patients underwent either foregut surgery (52%) or lung surgery (25%). Of the patients, 160 (38%) were on home pain medication before surgery, and 52 (12.4%) were on opioid pain medication before surgery. The median total MME during hospitalization was 73 mg, with a median average daily MME of 30 mg. There were 37 patients (8.8%) who experienced postoperative complications. Patients who had complications had a significantly higher median total MME of 135 [interquartile range (IQR) 73.0, 743.0] Conclusions: Hospital opioid use was associated with complications after thoracic surgical procedures. The amount of opioid medication received during hospitalization was an independent risk factor for postoperative complications in our patient population. Efforts to decrease the amount of opioid medication used with multimodal non-opioid medications may help improve surgical outcomes.
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