Study: No More Autopilot Opioids After Cesarean Delivery
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A group of clinicians is hoping to prompt a rethink of how opioids are prescribed to new mothers after cesarean deliveries after finding that sending patients home with smaller prescriptions led to dramatic drops in use of the drugs. In research scheduled to be presented Saturday at the 2022 annual meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) in San Diego, women undergoing cesarean delivery were randomly assigned to receive prescriptions for either 10 or 20 oxycodone tablets at discharge. Interim data revealed that not only did 10-tablet prescriptions correlate with significantly less opioid consumption, 35% of all women left their opioid scripts unfilled.
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@ritabhari The results suggest physicians should stop "automatically prescribing opioids for caesarean section patients at discharge and, instead, work on individualized prescribing. With "no standard dose recommendation for physicians to follow when it came to prescribing opioids for post-cesarean pain management.