Most seniors won’t abuse opioids after surgery

Seniors who receive prescriptions for opioid drugs to control pain after major surgery don’t usually end up addicted to them, research from Canada shows.

One year after having major surgery, less than 1 percent of patients older than 66 were still taking opioids, according to a report online August 9 in JAMA Surgery.

Recent research has suggested the number of people who remain on opioids well after surgery was high, said study author Dr. Hance Clarke of Toronto Western Hospital.

In a previous study, Clarke and his colleagues found only 3 percent of people who weren’t taking opioids before surgery were still taking them three months later. The new study followed patients for a longer period. Surgeons, Clarke said, want to know: If they put their patients on opioids following surgery, “is it safe and what are the outcomes?”

The researchers used administrative health care data from 2003-2010 on 39,140 people age 66 and older who were not taking opioids preoperatively. Slightly more than half, 53 percent, received at least one opioid prescription within 90 days after being released from the hospital.

One year later, only 168 of the 37,659 surviving patients, 0.4 percent, were still using opioids.

Those who had part of their lungs removed were the most likely to continue using opioids, which makes sense, Clarke said. “You’re opening someone’s thoracic cage and crushing nerves,” he said.

The researchers note that other studies too have found less than 1 percent of patients remain on opioids a year after their surgeries.