SAN DIEGO – Bariatric patients are nearly 50% more likely than general surgery patients to start using opioids after their procedures and continue taking the painkillers for a year, a new study finds.
It’s not clear why bariatric patients are at higher risk of continued opioid use, nor whether they are more likely to become addicted. Still, bariatric patients are a target for “intervention, enhanced education, early referral to specialists, protocols minimizing inpatient and outpatient narcotics, opioid-free operations, system-based interventions and prescribing guidelines,” says study lead author Sanjay Mohanty, MD, a surgery resident with the Henry Ford Health System, who spoke in a presentation at the annual clinical congress of the American College of Surgeons.
There’s been little research into opioid use among bariatric patients, said Dr. Mohanty. In 2013, a retrospective study found that 8% of 11,719 bariatric patients were chronic opioid users, and more than three-quarters of those remained so after 1 year. However, that study was completed in 2010 before the height of the opioid epidemic (JAMA. 2013;310(13):1369-76).
More recently, a 2017 study found that opioid use among 1,892 bariatric patients who weren’t using at baseline grew from 5.8% at 6 months to 14.2% at 7 years. The study tracked patients until January 2015 (Surg Obes Relat Dis. 2017 Aug;13 (8):1337-46).
Dr. Arthur Carlin
For the new study, researchers tracked 14,063 bariatric patients in the Michigan Bariatric Surgery Collaborative, a group of Michigan hospitals and health systems, from 2006-2017.
Of the patients, 73% were opioid-naive at baseline and 27% were users. At 1 year after procedure, overall use dropped slightly to 24%. However, 905 patients – 8.8% of the initial opioid-native group – were new and persistent opioid users.
According to Dr. Carlin, this is almost 50% higher than in patients after general surgical procedures.
These users were significantly more likely to be black (OR 1.67), less likely to have private insurance (0.76 OR), more likely to have income under $25,000 (OR 1.43), and more likely to have a mobility limitation (OR 1.78).
The researchers also found evidence linking a higher risk of new and persistent opioid use to lack of unemployment, depression, musculoskeletal disorders, tobacco use and gastric bypass procedures.
Why might bariatric patients in general be more susceptible to new and persistent opioid use? “We don’t know that answer,” Dr. Carlin said. “Maybe there’s some addiction transfer. Or maybe it’s something physiologic. We’re doing an operation on the gut, and that could have an impact on absorption.”
As for solutions, Dr. Carlin says “prescribe less, prescribe differently, be more patient-specific. We’re looking at different modalities to treat the pain such as nerve blocks during surgery, anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxants.”
And if patients aren’t using opioids in the hospital and not having that much pain, he said, physicians don’t send any pills home with them.
The next steps should include research into links between opioids and perioperative complications and surgical outcomes, the researchers suggested.
Dr. Carlin and Dr. Mohanty report no relevant disclosures.