Hip or Knee Surgery Recovery without Opioids

Hip or knee surgery recovery without opioids avoids the danger of those drugs. This pain treatment without opioids helps soothe your recovery.

Hip and knee replacement is a common surgical procedure — over seven million Americans now have artificial joints. These surgeries are especially common for those who are 50 and over who have hip or knee pain from osteoarthritis.

While advances in surgery have made joint replacement more successful than ever, there is some post-surgery pain, and the use of opioids to treat this discomfort has concerned both doctors and patients who want to avoid the side effects and addictive potential of those drugs.

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In recent years, as the dangers of opioids became more well-known, doctors have moved toward using other multiple approaches to help patients with hip and knee surgery recovery without opioids. This strategy is proving successful and showing pain treatment without opioids for hip or knee surgery recovery works.

Progress toward pain relief without opioids

Research from the University of Massachusetts, presented at the annual American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) meeting, found one in four hip or knee replacement patients were prescribed opioids in 2006. But by 2014, only one in 12 received opioid drugs after surgery — and the numbers show a steady decline.

"Opioids are powerful pain medications but have many unwanted side effects, including the risk of addiction. This has prompted more interest in offering patients multimodal therapies to manage pain while also reducing the amount of opioids prescribed," said University of Massachusetts medical student Philipp Gerner, who participated in the study. "Our research reflects that there has been steady progress over time toward achieving that goal."

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