American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Original ResearchObstetricsPersistent opioid use following cesarean delivery: patterns and predictors among opioid-naïve women
Section snippets
Data source
Study data were derived from the Clinformatics Data Mart, a database of health care utilization drawn from the transactions of the nationwide commercial US health insurer, UnitedHealthcare, for the years 2003–2011. The database contains transactional data on reimbursement for outpatient pharmacy dispensings, inpatient and outpatient services, and procedures and associated diagnoses (recorded using International Classification of Diseases, ninth edition CM codes). Only those beneficiaries with
Cohort
Our analytic cohort consisted of 80,127 women who underwent cesarean delivery from 2003 to 2011 and who were opioid naïve in the year prior to delivery (Figure 1). Patterns of opioid dispensing for each group estimated by the trajectory model in 12 30 day periods of follow-up are presented in Figure 2. For groups 1–3 (n = 76,557, 95.5% (95% confidence interval, 95.4–95.7%) of cohort), fewer than 10% of the group members filled an opioid prescription in each month of the follow-up period,
Comment
We found that opioid-naïve women who filled a prescription for an opioid analgesic after cesarean delivery have a small risk, approximately 1 in 300, of becoming persistent users of prescription opioids in the year following delivery. This frequency is relatively low, which should be reassuring to physicians and patients. However, because approximately 1.3 million women undergo cesarean delivery in the United States (and many more worldwide) annually, the absolute number of persistent opioid
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Cited by (0)
This study was supported by an unrestricted research grant from CVS Caremark to Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (award number K08HD075831).
The authors report no conflicts of interest.
Cite this article as: Bateman BT, Franklin JM, Bykov K, et al. Persistent opioid use following cesarean delivery: patterns and predictors among opioid-naïve women. Am J Obstet Gynecol 2016;215:353.e1-18.