Nearly one in four patients is given opioids immediately before surgical intervention, according to a large cross-sectional, observational study at a tertiary care academic medical center.
The study, which appears in JAMA Surgery, collected information from 34,186 patients, with a mean age of 53.1 years, from March 2010 through April 2016 (JAMA Surg 2018 Jul 11. [Epub ahead of print]).
Overall, 23.1% of patients reported preoperative opioid use.