Self-Reported Pain Tolerance and Opioid Pain Medication Use After Foot and Ankle Surgery

Background: Orthopaedic surgeons must consider their postoperative pain management strategies to minimize harm from prescription opioid use. Patients often reference their pain threshold to predict how they will tolerate surgical pain and the need for postoperative analgesia, but the direct relationship between these factors has not yet been studied. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between patients' self-reported pain tolerance and prescription opioid usage after foot and ankle surgery. Methods: This is a retrospective follow-up of a prospective cohort study of adult patients who underwent outpatient foot and ankle surgeries. Patient and procedural demographics, opioid pills dispensed, and opioid pills consumed by the first postoperative visit were obtained. Patients were contacted at a mean of 13.1 +/- 4.0 months postoperatively and asked to respond to the qualitative statement "Pain doesn't bother me as much as it does most people." Patients were also asked their quantitative pain threshold (0-100), with 0 being "very pain intolerant" and 100 being a "very high pain tolerance," as well other questions regarding past surgical and narcotic consumption history. Results: Of the 700 survey respondents, the average age was 50.9 years and 34.7% were male. Bivariate analysis determined that predictors of lower postoperative opioid consumption included higher quantitative (P = .047) and qualitative (P = .005) pain tolerance scores. Multivariate analysis for the entire cohort demonstrated that higher qualitative pain threshold was associated with lower postoperative opioid consumption (P = .005) but this did not meet statistical significance as an independent predictor of the top quartile of pill consumers. Conclusion: Assessment of both qualitative and quantitative score of patients' pain threshold prior to surgery may assist the surgeon in tailoring postoperative pain control. Additionally, asking this question can create an opportunity for educating patients regarding responsible utilization of narcotic medication.