Postoperative Opioid Use and Prescribing Patterns among Patients Undergoing Cervical Laminectomy with Instrumented Fusion versus Cervical Laminoplasty with Reconstruction.

Study Design: Retrospective cohort study.

Objective: To compare patterns in opioid usage and prescriptions between patients who undergo cervical laminectomy with instrumented fusion (LF) vs cervical laminoplasty with reconstruction (LP) within single surgeon and national database cohorts.

Methods: We identified patients with cervical myelopathy undergoing primary LF or LP in both a single-surgeon series cohort (2004-2018) and a nationally representative cohort drawn from the IBM Marketscan database (2014-2016). We recorded opioid usage within 6 months of surgery and identified differences in unadjusted opioid use rates between LF and LP patients. Multivariable logistic regression was used to evaluate the association between procedure type and postoperative opioid use.

Results: Without adjusting for covariates, LF patients had a higher rate of 6-month opioid use in the single-surgeon cohort (15.7% vs 5.1%, = .02). After adjusting for covariates, LF patients had higher odds of 6-month postoperative opioid use (OR 2.8 [95% CI 1.0-7.7], = .04). In the national cohort, without adjusting for covariates, there was no significant difference in 6-month opioid use between LF and LP patients. Even after adjusting for covariates, we found no significant difference in odds.

Conclusions: Findings from a single-surgeon cohort reveal that LF is associated with a higher rate of 6-month opioid use than LP. This is at odds with findings from a national database cohort, which suggested that LP and LF patients have similar rates of opioid usage at 6-months postoperatively. To prevent overuse of narcotics, surgeons must consider the distinct pain requirements associated with different procedures even in treatment of the same condition.