Abstract
Introduction
Total hip arthroplasty (THA) candidates have received high doses of opioids within the perioperative period for the management of surgical pain. Healthcare systems have responded by improving opioid administration documentation and are now implementing opioid-sparing protocols (OSP) into THA integrated care pathways (ICP). Here we evaluate the effectiveness of a novel OSP in primary THA at out institution.
Methods
Between January 2019 to April 2019, all patients undergoing primary THA were placed under a novel OSP (Table 1). Patient demographics, inpatient/surgical factors, and inpatient opiate administration events were collected. A historical 2:1 cohort was subsequently derived from patients undergoing THA between January 2018 to August 2018.
Opiate administration events collected from our EDW were converted into Morphine Milligram Equivalences (MMEs) and transformed into average MME's per patient per 24-hour interval. Nursing documented visual analog scale (VAS) pain scores were also queried and averaged per patient per 12-hour interval. To assess immediate postoperative functional status, the validated Activity Measure for Post-Acute Care (AM-PAC) Short Forms tool was utilized.
Results
652 primary THAs had received our institution's OSP, and 1357 patients were utilized as our historical control. Age, gender, BMI, ASA physical status score, race, smoking status, marital status, surgical time, length of stay and discharge disposition were all similar between the two groups (Table 2).
Compared to historical controls, OSP patients demonstrated significantly lower 24-hour interval opiate consumption at 0–24, 24–48 and 48–72 hours. Though VAS pain score variations reached statistical significance at various intervals, differences were not clinically relevant (Table 4). Lastly, OSP patients demonstrated significantly higher AM-PAC scores across all 6 functional domains (Table 5) and raw total scores within 24-hours of surgery completion.
Discussion
Our OSP reduced opiate consumption by 26.50% while maintaining a comparable level of self-reported patient pain. Lower opiate utilization may also improve functional status in the immediate postoperative period.
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