Multimodal Pain Control Utilizing Buprenorphine for Robotic-assisted Laparoscopic Prostatectomy: A Quality Improvement Comparison to Conventional Opioid Management.

Introduction: This study investigated the effectiveness of buprenorphine as an alternative to the use of conventional opioids perioperatively in an effort to help mitigate the impact of the use of perioperative conventional opioids for patients undergoing robotic-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy.

Methods: Outcomes of patients with localized prostate cancer undergoing robotic-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy were examined before and after implementation of novel quality improvement study that included receiving buprenorphine compared to conventional opioids for pain control intraoperatively and postoperatively. The primary end point was adequate pain control with secondary end points being analgesic consumption at home, opioid-related side effects, and patient satisfaction.

Results: When analyzing the secondary end point of oral morphine milligram equivalents, the buprenorphine group received significantly less morphine milligram equivalent compared to the conventional opioid group (15.19 vs 47.91, = .006). The buprenorphine group also had lower reported pain scores at discharge (4.3; scale 1-10) compared to the conventional opioid group (5.4), though this did not reach significance ( = .069). In the buprenorphine group, 76.9% strongly agreed that their pain was adequately controlled in the hospital compared to 57.5% of the conventional opioid group ( = .223). There was no difference in overall satisfaction at postoperative day 5 ( = .358).

Conclusions: Our study demonstrates buprenorphine's analgesic capabilities to maintain adequate pain control and patient satisfaction compared to conventional opioids during robotic-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy, while decreasing perioperative opioid use.