According to recently published results, there was a significant correlation between increased health care costs and adverse perioperative surgical outcomes in patients who used opioids prior to total joint arthroplasty.

“For orthopedic surgeons, I believe that the key takeaway here is that preoperative opioid use is associated with poor outcomes for the patients [those] orthopedists are caring for,” Elizabeth Ann Stringer, PhD, told Healio.com/Orthopedics. “That includes longer length of stay, readmissions, infections [and] revisions, which then drive higher costs associated with those patients who are taking opioids preoperative[ly].”