Trends in use of antipsychotics and psychoactive drugs in older patients after major surgery.

BACKGROUND: Professional society guidelines recommend limiting the use of antipsychotics in older patients with postoperative delirium. How these recommendations affected the use of antipsychotics and other psychoactive drugs in the postoperative period has not been studied.

METHODS: This retrospective cohort study included patients 65 years or older without psychiatric diagnoses who underwent major surgery in community hospitals (CHs) and academic medical centers (AMCs) in the United States. The outcome was the rate of hospital days exposed to antipsychotics, antidepressants, antiepileptics, benzodiazepines, hypnotics, and selective alpha-2 receptor agonist dexmedetomidine in the postoperative period by hospital type.

RESULTS: The study included 4,098,431 surgical admissions from CHs (mean age 75.0 [standard deviation, 7.1] years; 50.8% female) during 2008-2018 and 2,310,529 surgical admissions from AMCs (75.0 [7.4] years; 49.4% female) during 2009-2018. In the intensive care unit (ICU) setting, the number of exposed days per 1000 hospital-days declined for haloperidol (CHs: 33-21 days [p < 0.01]; AMCs: 24-15 days [p < 0.01]) and benzodiazepines (CHs: 261-136 days [p < 0.01]; AMCs: 150-77 days [p < 0.01]). The use of atypical antipsychotics, antidepressants, antiepileptics, and dexmedetomidine increased, while hypnotic use varied by the hospital type. In the non-ICU setting, the rate declined for haloperidol in CHs but not in AMCs (CHs: 10-6 days [p < 0.01]; AMCs: 4-3 days [p = 0.52]) and for benzodiazepines in both settings (CHs: 126-56 days [p < 0.01]; AMCs: 30-27 days [p < 0.01]). The use of antiepileptics and antidepressants increased, while the use of atypical antipsychotics and hypnotics varied by the hospital type.

CONCLUSIONS: The use of haloperidol and benzodiazepines in the postoperative period declined at both CHs and AMCs. These trends coincided with the increasing use of other psychoactive drugs.