Report IDs Characteristics of Adult ED Visits for Nonfatal Opioid Overdose

FRIDAY, June 2, 2023 (HealthDay News) — A report published online May 23 in the National Health Statistics Reports, a publication from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, provides a descriptive analysis of adult patients who visited the emergency department in 2016 for nonfatal opioid overdose (NOO).

Merianne Rose Spencer, M.P.H., from the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Maryland, and colleagues used 2016 National Hospital Care Survey data linked to the 2016 to 2017 National Death Index and 2016 to 2017 Drug-Involved Mortality data to identify characteristics of adult patients who visited the emergency department for NOO.

Data were included from 286,644 patients aged 18 to 64 years who visited the emergency department in 2016; 8,339 (2.9 percent) visited for at least one NOO. The researchers found that 38.8 and 61.2 percent of the patients with an emergency department visit for NOO were women and men, respectively. Overall, 485 patients with an emergency department visit for NOO died of a drug overdose and 399 died of other causes, including 23.1, 14.0, and 13.3 percent, respectively, from diseases of the circulatory system, neoplasms, and external causes of morbidity and mortality. Of the patients who died of a drug overdose and who had specific drug terms listed on their death certificate records, fentanyl and heroin were the most frequently mentioned drugs (53.6 and 35.1 percent, respectively).

“Many deaths involve more than one drug, so multiple drugs can be listed on death certificates,” the authors write. “For the patients in this study who died of a drug overdose, other drugs found included oxycodone, morphine, methadone, methamphetamine, alprazolam, and citalopram.”