Postop opioid prescriptions following outpatient surgery see steep, sustained fall

Editor's Note

US surgeons are helping to slash postoperative opioid use, which has driven opioid prescription fills for common same-day procedures down from 43% to 16% over 13 years, Physician’s Weekly April 22 reports. The data were retrieved from a study published in the April 2025 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

According to the article, the investigators mined the Optum Clinformatics Data Mart to track more than 340,000 adults who underwent one of six outpatient surgical procedures—reduction mammoplasty, Mohs micrographic surgery, endoscopic sinus surgery, arthroscopic shoulder surgery, strabismus repair, or vasectomy—between 2009 and 2022.

Key findings include:

• 8% of patients filled an opioid prescription within a week of surgery in 2009
• The rate edged up to 43.1% in 2010 but then fell every year, reaching 15.9% by 2022
• This downward trajectory was statistically significant across all procedures (p < 0.001).

The article adds the pace of improvement accelerated over time. From 2012 through 2017, the average annual percent change (APC) in opioid fills declined by 5.4% (p < 0.001); from 2017 through 2022, the APC nearly tripled to a 12.9% yearly drop (p < 0.001).

The findings reportedly align with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance urging restraint in opioid prescriptions, signaling meaningful gains in opioid stewardship across multiple surgical subspecialties. The investigators concluded that perioperative teams are increasingly succeeding at limiting unnecessary opioid exposure following outpatient surgery.