RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Managing postoperative pain while minimizing opioid-related adverse drug events (ORADEs) remains a significant challenge. The OPIâ¢AID Zone Tool is proposed as a novel clinical decision support tool that - both graphically and in a scoring-system - represents the relationship between pain management and the occurrence of ORADEs, aiming to enhance patient outcomes in postoperative care. The OPIâ¢AID Zone Tool places pain score on the x-axis and an ORADE score on the y-axis, and stratifies patients into five zones to reflect the composite impact of pain severity and ORADEs on the quality of postoperative patient care. The study will have two key aims: (1) to explore whether the OPIâ¢AID Zone Tool can function as a composite outcome measure for postoperative pain and ORADEs, and (2) to evaluate the use of the OPIâ¢AID Zone Tool in visual presentations and for evaluation of patients' postoperative pain management quality. METHODS: This prospective observational cohort study will include 200 adults undergoing various surgical procedures in general anesthesia with a subsequent stay in the post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) at Bispebjerg Hospital, Denmark. Substudy 1 primary outcome: To assess whether a zone score in the OPIâ¢AID Zone Tool is associated with patient-perceived health (EQ VAS), quality of recovery (QoR-PACU), and time to discharge readiness in PACU, and if the zone score has a stronger association than pain and ORADE score in themselves. Substudy 2 primary outcome: To assess how the use of intraoperative non-opioid analgesics impact where patients are placed in the OPIâ¢AID Zone Tool's XY scatterplot right after surgery. To assess if patients who receive more comprehensive non-opioid analgesic basic regimens, generally fall into lower zones. CONCLUSION: The OPIâ¢AID Zone Tool could potentially be a valuable clinical decision-making tool for optimizing postoperative care by simultaneously addressing pain management and the risk of ORADEs. By computing a composite measure of these two critical outcomes, the tool could guide more nuanced and patient-centered analgesic regimens, potentially improving patient satisfaction and operational efficiency in postoperative settings. The tool's applicability will be explored in this observational pilot and followed up in a planned series of studies (opiaid.dk).