OBJECTIVES: This analysis aimed to assess the costs and patient outcomes of parecoxib used in combination with opioids versus use of opioids alone in the postoperative treatment of surgical patients in China. METHODS: A decision analytic model was developed to compare parecoxib plus opioids treatment versus opioids alone in the first 5 days postsurgery. Clinical efficacy was based on a Phase III, randomized, double-blind, clinical trial that also provided the frequencies of individually and simultaneously occurring clinically meaningful events (CMEs) related to opioid use for both treatment arms (adverse events with high frequency, moderate-high severity, or that are quite a bit/very much bothersome). Resource use information is scarce in China, therefore a panel of clinical experts were interviewed to estimate costs of CMEs and the impact of having multiple CMEs at the same time. Treatment outcome was calculated in summed pain intensity scores. A series of one-way sensitivity analyses as well as probabilistic analyses were performed to test the robustness of the results. RESULTS: Patients treated with parecoxib plus opioids had lower summed pain intensity scores (87.20 vs 118.50) and fewer CMEs (0.87 vs 1.44 per patient) compared with opioids alone for a 5-day post-operative period. This outcome led to a full offset of the excess cost of the addition of parecoxib and led to potential savings of ¥327.59 per patient compared with opioid use alone. Savings were mainly attributable to reduced general ward and intensive care unit stays due to decreased CMEs. Inter-clinician variability in the resource use estimates were high, but did not change the qualitative conclusions of the analyses. CONCLUSIONS: Parecoxib used on top of opioids was a dominant strategy of postsurgical pain management by controlling pain intensity more effectively while reducing opioid-related CMEs, and lowering per-patient treatment costs.