Confounding Factors for Opioid Prescription after Common Pediatric Surgeries

I read with great interest the article of Horton and colleagues [1] in which the authors performed a retrospective study on 470 procedures (tonsillectomies and hernia repairs) and detected a significant variation in post-operative prescribing practices and overall over-prescription of opioids after these common pediatric surgical procedures. The authors should be applauded for performing a well-designed study in an important topic (e.g., acute pain) in patients undergoing pediatric surgery [2,3].