Despite being a common type of procedure, abdominal laparoscopic surgeries lack comprehensive, evidence-based, clinical practice guidelines for pain management. This is especially egregious in light of the overprescription of opioids after surgery, which puts patients at risk of opioid overdose and also contributes to the ongoing public health crisis of opioid-related deaths.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) has identified these surgeries as a high priority area for clinical practice guideline development. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is also interested in addressing the need for guidelines and the overuse of opioids in pain management.
Mary Butler, associate professor at the University of Minnesota (UMN) School of Public Health (SPH), along with Drs. Bronwyn Southwell and Genevieve Melton-Meaux from the UMN Medical School recently received a $2 million award from the FDA to address this key need by developing, implementing, and disseminating clinical practice guidelines for pain management with patients undergoing minimally invasive abdominal surgery.
The M-PALS Collaborative (“Managing Perioperative Pain with Abdominal Laparoscopic Surgery: A Collaborative to Develop, Disseminate, and Evaluate Evidence-Based Practices”) will leverage the expertise of the SPH Minnesota Evidence-Based Practice Center to develop evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for minimally invasive abdominal and pelvic surgery pain management. The collaborative will then implement the guidelines in practice environments, leveraging health information technology at UMN and the University of California San Francisco.
The project is a collaboration between the UMN and University of California San Francisco. Principal Investigators on the project are Bronwyn Southwell, Genevieve Melton-Meaux, and Mary Butler from UMN, and Elizabeth Wick from UC San Francisco.
SPH co-Investigators are Jared Huling and Stuart Grande. Other co-investigators include Shahnaz Sultan, Timothy Wilt, Debbie Pestka, Christopher Tignanelli,, Sue Duval, Aaron Berg, Roni Evans, Matthias Behrends, and Logan Pierce.
Researchers expect to share their findings and recommendations by 2026.
