Pain catastrophizing: does it affect surgical outcomes?

The opioid epidemic in the United States is the foremost problem in healthcare today. From 1999 to 2014, there has been a quadrupling of opioid prescription sales, with a concurrent decrease in the prescribing of nonopioid analgesics for new musculoskeletal pain (1,2). In the last two decades, opioid prescription rate in patients with chronic pain increased exponentially. In patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA) it rose from 31% in 2003 to 40% in 2009 (3).