Opioid prescription rates for knee surgery vary but higher strength dosage common

A new study found that opioid prescription rates for outpatient knee surgery vary widely across the country, but the strength of the average prescription in the United States is at a level that has been linked to an increased risk of overdose death. The study has been published in BMJ Open.While the nationwide rate at which patients - who had not already been taking opioids -received an opioid prescription after arthroscopic knee surgery was found to be more than 70 percent across the United States between 2015 and 2019.The variation at the state level was stark, bottoming out at 40 percent in South Dakota and reaching 85 percent in Nebraska, the study showed. The strength of the typical prescription, though, was revealed to be high, equal to 50 milligrams of morphine per day, the level that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified as being the threshold for increased risk of opioid overdose death.