Institutional Guidelines Can Decrease the Amount of Opioids Prescribed After Total Joint Replacement.

ABSTRACT:

Background

In the midst of the nationwide opioid epidemic, our institution began an effort to improve the education of opioid prescribers and disseminate procedure-specific guidelines for the number of opioid pills to prescribe post-operatively for total joint arthroplasty. The number of opioid pills suggested for total hip or knee replacement was 70 tablets.

Questions/purposes

We sought to evaluate the impact of the new institutional guideline on opioid prescribing practices, hypothesizing that it would lead to a decrease in the number of pills prescribed but an increase in patient call volume after discharge.

Methods

After the new guidelines were implemented in February 2018, we retrospectively reviewed all opioid prescriptions written for patients on the joint-repl

SUBMITTER: Kahlenberg CA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6384212 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature