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Lazarus Honored by Standard-Setting National Board for Medical Licensure

Dr. Robert Zura, Professor and Chair of Orthopaedic Surgery at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, was part of a research team reporting that not only may opioid use increase the risk of bone fractures, but opioids may also impair healing. The authors also question their effectiveness in controlling pain. Dr. Zura is a coauthor of the “Article in Press” available online in the journal, Injury.

The authors suggest that chronic use of certain medications may be a significant and substantial risk factor for fracture nonunion. Overall, 49.2% of opioid-naive patients receive an opioid prescription for post-operative pain control at hospital discharge after major surgery. Yet they report there is no evidence that opioids are more effective than non-opioids for acute extremity pain in the Emergency Department. The authors add that their data suggest that there is an inherent risk in use of most opioid analgesics and emphasize the importance of multimodal, non-opioid analgesic techniques at fracture.