Observational studyAnesthesia and analgesia2026
Opioid Intake and Quality of Life After Hospital Discharge From Major Surgery: A Health Economic Evaluation.
Observational study in Anesthesia and analgesia, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundEarlier studies have not examined the extent to which reducing postoperative opioid use after patient discharge would improve the quality of life of opioid naïve patients, knowledge needed for economic evaluations of drugs and devices (applications) that reduce morphine milligram equivalents. We quantified associations between postoperative opioid use and patient-centered health outcomes using the EuroQol group's EQ-5D-5L values, recorded longitudinally.
methodsProspective observational data were collected for adult patients, without regular preoperative opioid use, undergoing inpatient surgery at 2 US hospitals in 2022-2023. Patients were enrolled before hospital discharge. On the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days after discharge, smartphone-based application notifications requested survey completion, including weekly opioid use and health-related quality of life.
resultsThe 606 patients had 2292 pairwise observations of EQ-5D-5L values and morphine milligram equivalents. Treating each patient as their own control, each 1-unit increase in the square root of morphine milligram equivalents was associated with a 0.0108 reduction in the EQ-5D-5L utility value (standard error 0.0011, P < .0001). If no patient had received opioids after discharge, the predicted improvement would have been a mean of 0.0436 (0.0044) EQ-5D-5L utility values per week. Sensitivity analysis #1 examined the association between mean EQ-5D-5L among weeks and mean morphine milligram equivalents among weeks while controlling for procedural specialty. Each 1-unit increase in the square root of the morphine milligram equivalents was associated with a 0.0166 (0.0026) reduction in EQ-5D-5L values ( P < .0001). Sensitivity analysis #2 examined partial Kendall tau b between EQ-5D-5L and morphine milligram equivalents, using the 2292 pairwise observations, controlling for baseline observations when estimating the association for week 1, controlling for week 1 observations when estimating the association for week 2, etc. The 4 Bonferroni-adjusted P ≤ .0040 showed that less opioid use was associated with greater health-related quality of life.
conclusionsThree analyses using different assumptions showed that, among opioid naïve patients undergoing inpatient surgery, greater postoperative opioid consumption among surgical patients was associated with reduced health-related quality of life. However, the effect sizes were small, such that likely close to zero opioid intake after hospital discharge would be needed to exceed the minimal important difference. These results have implications for primary economic endpoints of future randomized trials of improved postoperative analgesia.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.