An individual prescribing plan based on inpatient use for women who delivered by cesarean section was associated with a lower number of unused oxycodone tablets, according to research published in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

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In a second study, there was a significantly lower number of opioid tablets prescribed for women who delivered by cesarean section after a shared decision-making quality improvement plan was implemented on an inpatient basis.

Sarah S. Osmundson, MD, MS, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., and her colleagues conducted a randomized, controlled trial of women who underwent cesarean delivery between June and August 2017. Of these women, 85 were randomized to receive standard care of 30 oxycodone tablets (5 mg) and 87 received an individualized care plan based on inpatient use of oxycodone. Patients were a minimum of 18 years old with similar baseline characteristics and inpatient pain scores.

The investigators found that women who were randomized to the individual care group received 14 oxycodone tablets (interquartile range, 12-16) and had 5 tablets (IQR, 1-8) left 2 weeks after discharge, compared with women who were prescribed 30 tablets in the standard care group (IQR, 30-30; P less than .001) and left 10 tablets unused (IQR, 0-22; P less than .001). There were no significant differences regarding patient-reported pain outcomes in either group, and women used about half as many prescribed tablets in the individualized group (8; IQR, 4-14), compared with women in the standard care group (15; IQR, 6-30; P less than .001).

Most women reported that they used opioids to treat pain and 30% said they believed they were supposed to finish all the tablets that were prescribed, the researchers noted. There were 11 patients (13%) in the standard care group and 12 (14%) in the individualized group who did not use any opioids; similarly, 23 patients (27%) in the standard care group and 21 (24%) in the individual care group used all tablets prescribed.

“If pain were the only determinant of opioid use, randomization should yield similar opioid use in both study groups,” Dr. Osmundson and her colleagues wrote. “These findings suggest that factors other than pain influence opioid use patterns.”

In a second study, Malavika Prabhu, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and her colleagues employed a prospective quality improvement (QI) initiative for women prescribed opioids after cesarean delivery. They evaluated the opioid use of 624 women and counseled them at discharge on the need for prescription opioids, using shared decision-making to determine the number of opioid tablets, with a maximum number of 30 oxycodone tablets (5 mg). The investigators also changed their protocol for multimodal analgesia to scheduled acetaminophen and NSAIDs. Patients were a mean of 30 years old and more than 50% were white. Median gestational age was 39 weeks at delivery. In a second phase of the study, the investigators lowered the maximum number of opioid tablets prescribed to 25 tablets.

At discharge, the mean number of prescribed opioid tablets decreased to 27 tablets from 33 tablets in phase 1 (P less than .01). In phase 2, the number of tablets further decreased to 22 tablets from 25 tablets (P less than .01). The investigators noted no significant difference in the refill rate during phase 1 (8% vs. 9%; P less than .79) and phase 2 (6% vs. 6%; P = .72). There was a significant increase in prescribing of acetaminophen from 33% at baseline to 77% at the end of phase 1 and an increase at the beginning of phase 2 at 91% to 92% at the end of phase 2. There were no statistically significant differences among prescriptions of ibuprofen at any phase time point.

“As a result of our success in decreasing opioid prescribing after cesarean delivery, our current protocol has again been amended to recommend a maximum of 20 tablets of 5-mg oxycodone (or equivalent opioid) prescribed at the time of discharge,” Dr. Prabhu and her colleagues wrote. “This decrease, which represents a 50% decrease in the departmental standard before this study, has been successfully implemented in 18 months. In addition, efforts to optimize multimodal analgesic use continue both inpatient and on discharge.”

Dr. Osmundson was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, and the research also was supported by an award from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences; the authors of the study reported no relevant conflicts of interest. The authors led by Dr. Prabhu had no relevant financial disclosures.

SOURCE: Prabhu M et al. Obstet Gyncol. 2018 Aug 4; doi: 10.1097/AOG.0000000000002789, and Osmundson SS et al. Obstet Gynecol. 2018 Aug 6; doi: 10.1097/AOG.0000000000002782.

Two approaches lowered opioid use after cesarean deliveries