Abstract
Introduction
Regional anesthesia (RA) is used reduce pain in proximal humerus and humeral shaft fracture surgery. The study hypothesis was that RA would decrease opioid demand in patients undergoing fracture surgery.
Materials and methods
Opioid demand was recorded in all patients ages 18 and older undergoing proximal humerus or humeral shaft fracture surgery at a single, Level I trauma center from 7/2013 – 7/2018 (n = 380 patients). Inpatient opioid consumption from 0–24, 24–48, and 48–72 h and outpatient opioid demand from 1-month pre-operative to 90-days post-operative were converted to oxycodone 5-mg equivalents (OE's). Unadjusted and adjusted models were constructed to evaluate the impact of RA and other factors on opioid utilization.
Results
Adjusted models demonstrated increases in inpatient opioid consumption in patients with RA (6.8 estimated OE's without RA vs 8.8 estimated OE's with RA from 0–24 h post-op; 10 vs 13.7 from 24–48 h post-op; and 8.7 vs 11.6 from 48–72 h post-op; all p < 0.05). Estimated cumulative outpatient opioid demand was significantly higher in patients with RA at all timepoints.
Discussion
In proximal humerus and humeral shaft fracture surgery, RA was associated with increased inpatient and outpatient opioid demand after adjusting for baseline patient and treatment characteristics.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
