A group-based brief intervention for surgery patients with high-risk substance use

A Systematic Review of Care Needs for Surgical Patients with Chronic Opioid Use

An understudied aspect of the opioid crisis with implications for nursing is care of hospitalized surgical patients with chronic opioid use. Care needs of these patients are not well understood. This systematic review identified salient care needs and explored the role of nursing in meeting these needs.

Preoperative Interventions for Alcohol and Other Recreational Substance Use: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background: Preoperative alcohol and other recreational substance use (ORSU) may catalyze perioperative complications. Accordingly, interventions aiming to reduce preoperative substance use are warranted. Methods: Studies investigating interventions to reduce alcohol and/or ORSU in elective surgery patients were identified from: Cochrane Library; MEDLINE; PSYCINFO; EMBASE; and CINAHL. In both narrative summaries of results and random effects meta-analyses, effects of interventions on perioperative alcohol/ORSU, complications, mortality and length of stay were assessed. Primary Results: Nine studies (n = 903) were included. Seven used behavioral interventions only, two provided disulfiram in addition. Pooled analyses found small effects on alcohol use (d: 0.34; 0.05-0.64), though two trials using disulfiram (0.71; 0.36-1.07) were superior to two using behavioral interventions (0.45; -0.49-1.39). No significant pooled effects were found for perioperative complications, length of hospital stay or mortality in studies solely targeting alcohol/ORSU. Too few interventions targeting ORSU (n = 1) were located to form conclusions regarding their efficacy. Studies were generally at high risk-of-bias and heterogeneous. Conclusions: Preoperative interventions were beneficial in reducing substance use in some instances, but more high-quality studies targeting alcohol/ORSU specifically are needed. The literature to date does not suggest that such interventions can reduce postoperative morbidity, length of hospital stay or mortality. Limitations in the literature are outlined and recommendations for future studies are suggested.