Grant: Project Grant

Canada is living a crisis of opioid use and abuse partially caused by increased prescriptions by doctors. Recent data show that over 4000 people die every year in Canada because of opioid overdoses. This means that opioids cause more than 10 deaths every day. People often receive their first opioid prescription to treat pain after surgery and many misuse the drug and become addicted. For this reason, whenever possible, the first opioid prescription to treat surgical pain should be prevented using opioid-free analgesia (i.e. pain treatment using only non-opioid medications). Previous studies have compared opioid versus opioid-free analgesia to treat pain after surgery; however, data from these studies have never been reviewed or combined to inform clinicians on which treatment is better. Therefore, the main question that we aim to answer in our review study is: For patients who had a surgery, is pain treatment using opioids superior to pain treatment not using opioids? Answering this question is essential because, if opioid-free analgesia is found to be as effective as analgesia using opioids, doctors may be able to substantially reduce the prescription of opioids after surgery. We will search for and analyze data from studies comparing opioid versus opioid free-analgesia after surgery. Data from these studies will be combined using sophisticated statistical methods. This will be the first ever review study on this important topic. We have assembled an expert team of scientists, surgeons and pain specialists to ensure the success of this study. Our results will provide important information to guide clinicians' decision to prescribe (or not prescribe) opioids after surgery. This, in the future, may prevent more people from misusing opioids, becoming addicted and dying from overdoses.