Our new study in @AnnalsofSurgery looked at new persistent opioid use after inguinal hernia repair.

What is that and why is it important, you ask?

A brief thread... 1/9 https://twitter.com/AnnalsofSurgery/status/1334509269627129859

2/9 "New persistent opioid use" refers to when an opioid-naïve patient undergoes surgery, gets a prescription intended for *short-term* pain control, but continues using opioids for months to years after their operation.

3/9 This has been found to affect many different kinds of operations (general, oncologic, and even pediatric) and is associated with long-term opioid-related morbidity.

4/9 Given that inguinal hernia repair is one of the most common procedures in the US, we wanted to know 1) how many patients develop new persistent opioid use after surgery and 2) what factors are associated with new persistent opioid use.

5/9 To do this, we analyzed a large claims database and identified patients who underwent inguinal hernia repair, filled a perioperative opioid prescription, and also filled *TWO* more opioid prescriptions up to 6 months after surgery.

6/9 We found that 1.5% of patients developed new persistent opioid use after inguinal hernia repair. If over 700,000 repairs are performed annually, this translates to 10,000 patients developing long-term opioid use after surgery EACH YEAR!

7/9 Importantly, 10% of patients received an opioid prescription *BEFORE* their surgery and this quadrupled their risk of developing new persistent use.

8/9 Who is writing these preoperative opioid prescriptions? Turns out, it's mostly surgeons, followed by PCPs and EM docs.

9/9 What's the take away? A lot of patients undergoing a simple, outpatient procedure develop long-term opioid use. Surgeons providing preop prescriptions to treat hernia-related pain should abandon this practice, since it significantly increases this risk!