At the Miami Breast Cancer Conference on March 5, I presented our center’s experience utilizing opioid-sparing pain management protocols to drastically reduce the amount of opioid medications needed after surgery.
According to the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, most misused opioids are diverted from unused prescriptions from a friend or relative (51%) or from their own prescription (38%). The likelihood of needing opioids for the rest of your life is directly related to the number of days that opioids are required after surgery. Therefore, by implementing strategies using non-opioid medications to treat pain after surgery, we can minimize the need for opioids after surgery… and that is exactly what our team did.
In 2017, I designed and implemented a 10-step protocol for patients undergoing lumpectomy and mastectomy without reconstruction that helped expedite patient recovery, with the added benefit of minimizing anxiety and unnecessary pain around the time of surgery. Since that time, we have shown that using “Enhanced Recovery After Surgery” ERAS protocols not only IMPROVES pain control around the time of surgery, but ELIMINATES the need for opioid medications after surgery. Furthermore, newer data suggests that using opioids around the time of surgery may increase the risk of breast cancer recurring, so it is even more important that we eliminate the need for these medications.
With the implementation of our protocols, we have been able to completely eliminate the need for opioids after breast surgery, while demonstrating improved postoperative pain control. Is your surgeon using opioid-minimizing strategies to make sure you recover quickly from surgery?
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