The rate of opioid users in the Seattle metropolitan area who suffered overdose-related cardiac arrests outside of hospitals more than doubled from 2015 to 2021, a new study has found.
In the study published Tuesday, a team of eight researchers worked with a medical examiner to analyze the toxicology reports of 6,790 cardiac arrest patients in King’s County, Washington.
Researchers found the rate of overdose-related cardiac arrests “increased significantly” over the period, from 5.2 to 13 per 100,000 people, led by patients who used a combined stimulant opioid. At the same time, there was no corresponding surge in the number of cardiac arrests not related to opioids.
The findings confirm that drug overdose patterns have changed to involve “more than just opioids alone,” said cardiologist Dr. Neal Chatterjee, a co-author of the study and associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington.
“Overall, I would emphasize that drug abuse and overdose are expanding public health emergencies,” Dr. Chatterjee told The Washington Times.
The data comes as fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that depresses the central nervous system, has fueled a decade-long surge in drug overdose deaths that worsened during COVID restrictions. More than 100,000 Americans die from drug overdoses annually, according to the federal government.
In legal form, doctors prescribe fentanyl as a painkiller that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. Counterfeit pills have increasingly flooded U.S. streets from China since 2013, along with illicit fentanyl powder manufactured in Chinese and Mexican drug labs with Chinese chemicals.
Drug users have increasingly added xylazine to opioid drugs, creating a narcotics cocktail known as “tranq dope” to extend the euphoria they experience from a “high.” However, the combination drug increases the risk of overdose and can cause skin abscesses and ulcers that sometimes result in amputations.
The study published in JAMA Network Open found that sharp increases in out-of-hospital cardiac arrests related to the combined use of opioids and stimulants drove the overall increase.
According to the study’s co-author Dr. Chatterjee, the findings provide “key context” for counseling and caring for drug addicts.
“Some of what may be driving an increase in ‘mixed’ drug use is the misperception that using stimulants can improve the safety of or enhance the high associated with depressants like opioids,” he said. “Clearly, this is not the case and, if anything, when these drugs are combined, survival after a related cardiac arrest was the worst.”
Psychologist Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University addiction researcher who tracks the opioid crisis and was not involved in the study, said the results call for additional research.
“These are important and disturbing findings,” Mr. Humphreys told The Times. “That opioids can cause heart attacks is an underappreciated risk that is no doubt contributing to the severity of America’s opioid crisis.”
