Retrospective study of the effect of opioid prescribing guidelines on prescribing practices in pediatric orthopedic sports medicine patients having knee surgery: A single institution's experience.

Objective: Guidelines for opioid prescription post-operatively exist; however, the majority of these are for adults. Nevertheless, opioid risks are present for pediatric patients also. This study investigates the effect of a single institution's guidelines on post-operative opioid prescribing for pediatric orthopedic patients undergoing knee surgery. We hypothesized that a standardized set of prescribing guidelines would result in a decrease in opioids prescribed at discharge home after these surgeries.
Design: Retrospective observational.
Setting: Urban, tertiary care, academic orthopedic hospital.
Patients: Pediatric, sports knee surgery, 23-month period.
Interventions: Guidelines were implemented institutionally for post-operative opioid prescribing practices. We reviewed all post-operative opioid prescriptions for pediatric patients undergoing sports knee surgery with two pediatric sports surgeons for the 11 months prior to the guidelines and 12 months afterwards, totaling 316 surgeries.
Main Outcome Measure: Oral morphine equivalents (OMEs) prescribed on discharge from the hospital before and after implementation of guidelines.
Results: There was a significant reduction in OMEs from 229 OMEs to 175 OMEs before and after opioid prescribing guidelines (p < 0.001). This is a decrease in approximately seven 5 mg oxycodone tablets per patient.
Conclusions: This study demonstrates that at our institution, with a pediatric patient population having sports knee surgery, prescribing guidelines reduced the number of opioids prescribed at discharge.