Hills JM, et al. - In this longitudinal cohort study, researchers examined patients undergoing elective spine surgery for 1-year patient-reported outcomes associated with preoperative chronic opioid therapy and for high-preoperative opioid dosages. For this purpose, they linked their prospective institutional spine registry data to opioid prescription data collected from the state's Prescription Drug Monitoring Program. They included 2128 patients; 21% of these reported receiving preoperative chronic opioid therapy. They noted significantly less likelihood of achieving meaningful improvements at 1-year in pain, function, and quality of life and less likelihood of being satisfied at 1-year among patients treated with chronic opioids prior to spine surgery. In addition, these patients had higher odds of 90-day complications, regardless of dosage. They noted an independent association of postoperative chronic opioid use with both preoperative chronic opioid therapy and high-preoperative dosage.