Spillover Effect of Opioid Reduction Interventions From Adult to Pediatric Surgery

Procedure-specific prescribing guidelines and trainee education have reduced opioid overprescribing in adult surgical patients, but tailored interventions do not yet exist for children. It is unknown what effect these adult interventions have had on postoperative opioid prescribing in children at the same institution, where trainees rotate across both adult and pediatric services.

This retrospective study of patients (<18 y) undergoing pediatric surgery (PS), pediatric otolaryngology (ENT), or pediatric urology (URO) procedures at a single tertiary academic center assessed opioid doses per patient before (January 01, 2015 to September 30, 2016) and after (January 01, 2017 to March 31, 2018) opioid prescribing guidelines and trainee education were instituted for adult laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Patient demographics, postoperative opioid prescribing, opioid refills, and emergency department (ED) visits <21 d after surgery were compared using chi-squared analyses and t-tests. Interrupted time-series analyses (ITSA) assessed changes in the rate of opioid prescribing pre- and postintervention for each subspecialty.

There were 3371 patients preintervention and 2439 patients postintervention. After the intervention, fewer patients were prescribed opioids (ENT: 97% versus 93%, P < 0.001; URO: 98% versus 94%, P < 0.001; PS: 61% versus 25%, P < 0.001) and fewer opioid doses were prescribed in each prescription (ENT: 63.8 ± 26.1 versus 50.8 ± 22.0 doses, P < 0.001; URO: 33.5 ± 23.4 versus 22.1 ± 11.3, P < 0.001; PS: 20.4 ± 12.8 versus 13.8 ± 11.4 doses, P < 0.001). There were no changes in opioid refill or ED visit rates postintervention. A decreasing rate in ENT prescribing was seen preintervention, with no significant change postintervention (-2.3 ± 1.1 versus -3.3 ± 0.7; P = 0.24). Whereas, the rate of decrease in PS and URO prescribing significantly slowed postintervention (PS: -2.0 ± 0.1 versus -0.9 ± 0.1, P < 0.001; URO: -4.2 ± 0.2 versus -2.3 ± 0.5, P = 0.005).

Opioid prescribing rates are decreasing, but adult interventions did not achieve reductions in pediatric opioid prescribing at the same institution. There was no concomitant rise in postoperative ED visits or opioid refills as prescribing declined, indicating that the risks of reducing opioid prescriptions may be minimal. Development of evidence-based, procedure-specific prescribing guidelines that specifically address pediatric patients are needed to effectively minimize opioid overprescribing in this population.