A Prospective Study of Post-operative Opioid Use in General Surgery Patients

A Prospective Study of Post-operative Opioid Use in General Surgical Patients

Patients undergoing approximately 10 common outpatient general surgical operations will be given a narcotic prescription for a specified number of pills.

Inpatients who are about to be discharged after surgery or trauma will be given narcotic prescriptions for a specified number of pills. Patients will be given a patient report form which they will use to record the number of pills they take each day and their daily pain score on a scale of 0-10.

Inclusion Criteria:

• >= 18 years of age
• undergoing one of 9 elective outpatient operations: partial mastectomy, partial mastectomy and sentinel node biopsy, melanoma wide excision and sentinel node excision, thyroidectomy, parathyroidectomy, open inguinal hernia repair, laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair, laparoscopic cholecystectomy OR
• an inpatient on the general surgery service who took at least one oral narcotic

Exclusion Criteria:

• allergic to all narcotics
• chronic opioid use
• history of opioid or benzodiazepine abuse