Pilot Trial: Postoperative Opioid-free Analgesia

North America is facing an opioid epidemic fueled by surgeons, who are the second largest subgroup of physicians involved in opioid prescribing. Surgery often serves as the initial event for opioid-naïve patients to obtain a prescription for opioids and spiral into misuse and addiction. From the perspective of perioperative care clinicians, the answer to the opioid crisis may be using opioid-free analgesia. However, the number of comparative studies in this field is limited and existing small trials do not reflect current standards of care in North America. Lack of evidence means that the decision to prescribe opioids after outpatient surgery largely depends on surgeon preference and healthcare culture. Hence, there is an urgent need for a robust randomized controlled trial (RCT) to guide clinical decision-making. The feasibility and optimal design of this RCT should be informed by a pilot trial. The overarching goal of this pilot RCT is to investigate the feasibility of conducting a full-scale RCT to assess the comparative-effectiveness of opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after outpatient general surgery.