For a patient having their wisdom teeth removed, the days after surgery can bring an important question: How much pain medication will I actually need?
Over-the-counter medications such as acetaminophen and ibuprofen provide adequate pain relief for most, but some patients experience breakthrough pain that does not respond to these medications and may benefit from an opioid. For clinicians, the challenge is knowing before surgery which patients will need additional pain relief.
Harvard School of Dental Medicine faculty, residents, and students are exploring whether artificial intelligence could help make those decisions more precise. In a new paper published in Current Surgery Reports, the authors examine how AI and machine learning could help clinicians predict postoperative opioid needs and identify patients who may be at greater risk for misuse, prolonged use, or inadequate pain control.
“The fundamental problem is that opioid prescribing is still largely standardized, while patients’ actual pain medication needs are highly individualized. Two patients can undergo essentially the same operation, performed by the same surgeon, and have very different experiences with pain and swelling afterward due to biology and pain tolerance,” said Tim Wang, senior author and chief resident of the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMFS) program at the Dental School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
