Anesthesiology
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Whether a particular surgeon's opioid prescribing behavior is associated with prolonged postoperative opioid use is unknown. This study tested the hypothesis that the patients of surgeons with a higher propensity to prescribe opioids are more likely to utilize opioids long-term postoperatively. ⋯ Among Medicare fee-for-service patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty, surgeon-level variation in opioid utilization in the immediate perioperative period was associated with statistically significant but clinically insignificant differences in opioid utilization in the medium- and long-term postoperative periods.
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For the task of estimating a target benchmark dose such as the ED50 (the dose that would be effective for half the population), an adaptive dose-finding design is more effective than the standard approach of treating equal numbers of patients at a set of equally spaced doses. Up-and-down is the most popular family of dose-finding designs and is in common use in anesthesiology. ⋯ This article provides an overview of up-and-down properties, recent methodologic developments, and practical recommendations, illustrated with the help of simulated examples. Additional reference material is offered in the Supplemental Digital Content.