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A review of opioid prescription predicting continued narcotic use:
Recently, there has been a great deal of literature discussing the opioid addiction problem in this country. Although there have been multiple studies discussing the ideal duration and amount of post-operative pain management, there have not been any studies with plastic surgery patients. It is important to understand whether such recommendations should be included in breast augmentation surgery as well as breast reduction surgery.
These are very important topics in Miami and should certainly be investigated.
This recent study by Johns Hopkins University addresses this issue. In the study, there was no malice associated with the 24,594 reduction mammaplasty (breast reduction) patients. This study looked at the amount of opioid that was given to each patient and reviewed for 16 months post-op. It was then evaluated to see how many patients required refill medications.
Based on the studies, it was recommended that limiting outpatient opioid exposure to a range of 15 to 59 daily morphine milligrams was ideal. This is a dose consistent with 5 mg of hydrocodone every six hours with the duration to be no more than 3 to 5 days of care. This study has shown to be consistent with the findings of Don plastic surgery operations.
The final recommendations of the authors was to perform similar studies using different operations; however, it should be noted that the plastic surgery patient appears to be consistent with the literature found in other surgical specialties.