Wackerbarth JJ, Ham SA, Aizen J, et al. - In comparison with comorbidity matched non-surgical cohort, patients developed persistent opiate usage after urologic surgery. The data indicated that tramadol was specifically correlated with higher odds of novel persistent opioid usage compared to other opioids. As per the findings, tramadol can not be considered a safer choice regarding developing persistent usage and considering prospective validation of these results.

• The study enrolled a total of 115,687 patients.

• In this study, 14.8% of the urologic surgery cohort had persistent opioid usage compared to 10.8% in the opioid naïve matched non-surgical cohort (OR=1.37; 95%CI 1.35-1.39) after 1 year.

• It was shown that discharge with tramadol was correlated with a higher odds of persistent usage compared to class II opioids controlling for type of urologic surgery, age, gender, and pain-related comorbidities (OR = 1.23 95% CI 1.13-1.35).

• The findings revealed that the odds of persistent usage varied slightly by type of urologic procedure, but all were higher than matched non-surgical cohorts.