Since 2009, hospital intensive care units have witnessed a stark increase in opioid-related admissions and deaths, according to new study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s (BIDMC) Center for Healthcare Delivery Science. Published online today ahead of print in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society, the study is believed to be the first to quantify the impact of opioid abuse on critical care resources in the United States. The findings reveal that opioid-related demand for acute care services has outstripped the available supply.
Analyzing data from the period between January 1, 2009 and September 31, 2015, the researchers documented a 34 percent increase in overdose-related ICU admissions. The average cost of care per ICU overdose admissions rose by 58 percent, from $58,517 in 2009 to $92,408 in 2015 (in 2015 dollars). Meanwhile opioid deaths in the ICU nearly doubled during that same period. "This study tells us that the opioid epidemic has made people sicker and killed more people, in spite of all the care we can provide in the ICU, including mechanical ventilation, acute dialysis, life support and round-the-clock care," said the study's lead author, Jennifer P. Stevens, MD, associate director of the medical intensive care unit at BIDMC and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
[...] These data not only document the scope of the opioid abuse epidemic, they also reveal its complexity. Stevens and colleagues suggest that any opioid overdose-related admission is a preventable one, and that the team's findings not only represent the need for increased acute care resources, but also for expanded opioid-abuse prevention and treatment.
The article is paywalled but there is an abstract: The Critical Care Crisis of Opioid Overdoses in the United States
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday August 14 2017, @03:12AM (3 children)
It's come to be so bad that we actually have hard-hit states suing [nytimes.com] opioid manufacturers.
And just in time for the government to finally crack down on doctors writing rampant unmedical opioid prescriptions, now the streets are flooded with that Afghan heroin to take their place, cultivated from those same poppy fields we had our own soldiers guarding.
The CIA has their tendrils in everything. Don't believe me? As yourselves why all big media and even local media are all saying the exact goddamn things about the exact goddamn events, notably last election.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by realDonaldTrump on Monday August 14 2017, @04:23AM
This is different. Heroin and crack are like Hurricane Katrina but opioids are like Hurricane Sandy. The opioid crisis is an emergency. I'm saying officially right now it is an emergency. Because it's striking down my beautiful, beautiful white Americans. Who marched -- and drove -- so bravely this weekend in Charlottesville. To make America great again. 🇺🇸
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Monday August 14 2017, @04:28AM
Because the media is a monoculture echo-chamber: Seeing how cable subscribers are sheep willing to pay for advertising as original content, advertising became the single most important source of income. And if everyone is catering to the same customers, the party line becomes the only line.
You don't need the CIA as a single antagonist of a conspiracy when you have your entire society worshiping Mammon. When copyright laws promote the usage of new and highly addictive narcotics over perfectly suitable drugs you get whole nations rallying behind your cause: A military industrial complex pushes towards bombing the competing drug-lords in Mexico and Afghanistan. Script writers promoting gang-busting cops as the heroes of the people. Regulators illegalizing anything old enough to be made into a generic while doctors are being lied to about how the old drugs were very harmful and the new ones are perfectly safe...
It's a well-oiled, fine-tuned machine of culminating interests that doesn't need conspiracies for the cogs to turn.
compiling...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @07:03AM