There were 85 patients taking narcotics and 168 patients who were not taking any pain medication preoperatively. The group taking narcotics were slightly older — 53.6 years old — compared with the non-narcotics group — 48.2 years old. More patients with degenerative than adult scoliosis were in the narcotic group.
At the most recent two-year follow-up, around 88 percent of the non-narcotics group was still not taking narcotics; 61 percent of the narcotic patients were off narcotics. There were significant postoperative improvements in the narcotic group when compared with the non-narcotics group.
Particularly, the improvement in SRS pain score was significantly higher for the narcotics group than the non-narcotics group.
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