America’s opioid epidemic may be even deadlier and more widespread than previously thought, as a number of opioid-related deaths are attributed to other causes, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Deaths caused by or related to opioid use may be missed by systems that track cause of death, as prescription drug abuse can contribute to deaths from infectious diseases like pneumonia, says CDC field officer Victoria Hall, one of the authors of the report. Current tracking of opioid-related deaths focuses primarily on overdoses.
Additionally, for the average patient, physicians often see no reason to test for opioid toxicity and may instead list diseases or other reasons as the cause of death on certificates.
“There’s a lot of room for error,“ said Michael Barnett, assistant professor of health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health. ”People may not think to actually test somebody for levels of opioid in their system. I do think we have problems in how we write death certificates. It’s an ongoing health issue.”
In particular, the number of elderly who die from opioid-related causes has been underestimated, according to Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid policy research at the Heller School for Social Policy & Management at Brandeis University.
Kolodny said there has been an “enormous increase” in the number of elderly patients being treated for overdoses at hospitals, but this trend has not been reflected in the official count of elderly deaths attributed to opioids, implying that the known numbers are just “the tip of the iceberg.”
“The number of deaths that were recorded is a huge undercount. Many elderly people prescribed aggressive quantities of opioids are overdosing. ... What typically happens is the death gets attributed to the medical problem the elderly person had,” he said.
“There’s nothing like what’s happening right now in the United States that’s ever happened in the history of our country, probably in the history of the world.”
Missing Cases
Experts say the opioid epidemic is one of America’s biggest national health crises seen in modern times. About 78 people die per day from opioid overdoses, according to a report from the surgeon general published in November last year.
