Imagine breaking your hip in your 60s or older — the pain is severe, and managing it after surgery often means heavy doses of morphine, which can have side effects. A new study tested whether giving a single dose of methadone, another painkiller, right during the operation could help. It involved 129 patients with hip fractures, comparing those who received methadone to those who got a placebo.
The results show a mixed story. In the first 48 hours after surgery, patients who got methadone used less morphine — about 3 mg less on average in the first day and 1.2 mg less in the second. But after that, the placebo group actually used less morphine. More strikingly, the methadone group stayed in the hospital longer, averaging 5.6 days compared to 4.5 days for the placebo group.
On safety, the study didn't raise major alarms — harms like adverse events seemed comparable between groups. But the researchers caution that with so few events overall, they couldn't do a formal analysis to be sure. This means we don't yet know if methadone is clearly safer or riskier in this setting. The findings hint that while methadone might ease early pain, it could slow down recovery, leaving doctors and patients to weigh that balance carefully.
