A temporal analysis of opioid use, patient satisfaction, and pain scores in colorectal surgery patients.

BACKGROUND: Recent health care policy changes promote objective measurements of patient satisfaction with care provided during hospitalization. Acute postsurgical pain is a significant medical problem and strongly impacts patient experience and patient satisfaction. Multimodal analgesic pathways are used for acute pain management, but opioid medications remain a mainstay of treatment. Opioid use is increasing in the outpatient setting, but opioid use trends in the inpatient postsurgical setting are not well known. We hypothesized that use of opioid medications has increased over time along with decrease in postoperative pain scores and increase in pain-related patient satisfaction.

METHODS: In this single-center study, we studied the trends and correlation in the average daily pain scores, opioid consumption, and patient satisfaction scores as measured by pain-related patient satisfaction questions in the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and System survey. Pain scores and opioid use data were obtained from electronic health records, vital signs monitoring, and medication databases. Adult patients who had nonemergent colorectal surgeries between January 2009 and December 2012 were included.

RESULTS: We found no significant trend in opioid use or pain-related patient satisfaction scores. There was an average annual increase of 0.3 (98.3% confidence interval, 0.2-0.4; P< .001) in average daily pain score from 2.8 ± 1.5 to 3.8 ± 1.5. The univariable associations between time-weighted pain score, average daily opioid dose, and pain-related patient satisfaction score were all highly significant.

CONCLUSION: In this retrospective cohort study, opioid use and pain-related patient satisfaction scores were stable over time. Pain-related patient satisfaction scores were negatively associated with both pain score and opioid dose. The associations we report should not be considered evidence of a causal relationship.