Pediatric anesthesia & critical care
Improving perioperative acetaminophen administration for safer and cost‐effective multimodal analgesia in pediatric surgery: A QI initiative
Authors' conclusion
We successfully achieved and sustained our goals of improving acetaminophen use for our surgical patients without worsening pain scores or worsening use of intravenous opioids.
Study context
- Population
- Pediatric surgical patients
- Comparison
- Before vs after QI interventions
- Outcome
- Percentage of surgical patients receiving any form (oral or IV) of perioperative acetaminophen
- Follow-up
- 24 months
Methodological detailsmultidisciplinary team, model for improvement, Monthly data collected using an automated electronic medical record (EMR) report
- Multidisciplinary team
- Model for improvement
- Monthly data collected using an automated EMR report
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
Perioperative acetaminophen use (oral or IV), % of surgical patients
- Perioperative acetaminophen use increased from a baseline of 39.5% to 63% by the end of 24 months, surpassing the 50% goal
- Pre-post QI comparison, no concurrent control
Further findings
Perioperative acetaminophen use, early · 4 months
- Acetaminophen use increased from 39.5% to 70% within four months
Oral acetaminophen use
- Oral acetaminophen use increased from a baseline of 10% to 78%
Average maximum PACU pain score
- Average maximum PACU pain score improved from 5.4 to 5.2
Patients receiving rescue opioids, %
- Patients receiving rescue opioids decreased from 15.4 to 13.1
Parts of this Brief are withheld: the automatic checks could not confirm them against the abstract.
Original publication
Improving perioperative acetaminophen administration for safer and cost‐effective multimodal analgesia in pediatric surgery: A QI initiative. Paediatr Anaesth. Published 5 April 2024. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →