Higher Pain Catastrophizing and Preoperative Pain is Associated with Increased Risk for Prolonged Postoperative...

Prolonged postoperative opioid use (PPOU) is considered an unfavorable post-surgical outcome. Demographic, clinical, and psychosocial factors have been associated with PPOU, but methods to prospectively identify patients at increased risk are lacking.

Our objective was to determine whether an individual or a combination of several psychological factors could identify a subset of patients at increased risk for PPOU.

Observational cohort study with prospective baseline data collection and passive outcomes data collection.

A single VA medical center in the United States.

Patients were recruited from a preoperative anesthesia clinic where they were undergoing evaluation prior to elective surgery, and they completed a survey before surgery. The primary outcome was PPOU, defined as outpatient receipt of a prescribed opioid 31 to 90 days after surgery as determined from pharmacy records. Primary covariates of interest were pain catastrophizing, self-efficacy, and optimism. Additional covariates included social and demographic factors, pain severity, medication use, depression, anxiety, and surgical fear.

Of 123 patients included in the final analyses, 30 (24.4%) had PPOU. In bivariate analyses, preoperative opioid use and preoperative nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug use were significantly associated with PPOU. The combination of high pain catastrophizing and high preoperative pain (OR 3.32, 95% CI 1.41 - 7.79) was associated with higher odds of PPOU than either alone, and the association remained significant after adjusting for preoperative opioid use (OR 2.56, 95% CI 1.04 - 6.29).

Patients were recruited from a single site, and the sample was not large enough to include potentially important variables such as procedure type.

A combination of high pain catastrophizing and high preoperative pain has the potential to be a clinically useful means of identifying patients at elevated risk of PPOU.