It’s become a popular belief that many people become addicted to opioid pain medication after surgery. According to a recent national survey, one in ten pain patients believe they became addicted or dependent on opioids after they started taking them for post-operative pain.
But a large new study in Canada found that long term opioid use after surgery is extremely rare, with less than one percent of older adults still taking opioid pain medication a year after major elective surgery.
The study, published in the journal JAMA Surgery, looked at over 39,000 “opioid naïve” patients (no opioid prescriptions in the prior year) over age 65 who had a heart, lung, colon, prostate or hysterectomy surgery from 2003 to 2010.
Excerpted from an article in Pain News Network. To read the full article, click here.