Psychological resilience as a predictor of opioid consumption after orthopaedic trauma

Psychological distress after orthopaedic trauma negatively affects patient outcomes. Resilience may mediate distress and therefore be associated with post-operative outcomes, including opioid use. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between resilience and post-operative opioid demand with the hypothesis that low levels of resilience are associated with increased opioid consumption.

Patients age 18 - 65 at a single, tertiary care level 1 trauma center who underwent operative treatment of pelvic and/ or extremity fractures between 3/2017 - 6/2018 were contacted by phone to complete the OSPRO-YF, a ten-item screening tool that assesses psychological distress. Participants were screened for scores in the worst quartile (i.e., yellow flag) for resilience. Baseline patient and injury characteristics and opioid demand were compared between patients with and without positive yellow flags for resilience using Wilcoxon rank-sum for continuous variables and Fisher exact test for categorical variables.

A total of 117 patients were surveyed. Patients with positive yellow flag screening scores for resilience had significantly higher opioid demand, number of opioid prescriptions filled, and were more likely to refill prescriptions long-term (3-months post-discharge to one-year post-discharge). Patients with a positive yellow flag for resilience had a significantly higher number of opioid prescriptions filled in the cumulative (one-month pre-op to one-year post-discharge) time period.

Lower long-term resilience scores were associated with higher postoperative opioid consumption, fill and refill rates. These results suggest low resilience may be a risk factor for increased long-term opioid consumption following surgical treatment for orthopaedic trauma.