The ongoing opioid epidemic highlights health care’s role in fueling the crisis as well as the highly addictive nature of opioids.
Even a single exposure to opioids can increase the risk for dependence (Sun et al.; Thao et al.).
Although postoperative opioid prescriptions in ophthalmology are typically low dose and written without refills, the specialty is not spared from unintended harms. In one analysis, patients who received even a single opioid prescription after ophthalmic surgery had higher rates of hospitalization, overdose and mortality compared with those who did not, with risk