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Thursday, June 19, 2014

Death by prescription painkillers higher than heroin and cocaine combined

First major review provides evidence of sharp increase in deaths from painkillers in US and Canada and leading causes.

The number of deaths involving commonly prescribed painkillers is higher than the number of deaths by overdose from heroin and cocaine combined, according to researchers at McGill University. In a first-of-its-kind review of existing research, the McGill team has put the spotlight on a major public health problem: the dramatic increase in deaths due to prescribed painkillers, which were involved in more than 16,000 deaths in 2010 in the U.S. alone. Currently, the US and Canada rank #1 and #2 in per capita opioid consumption.

“Prescription painkiller overdoses have received a lot of attention in editorials and the popular press, but we wanted to find out what solid evidence is out there,” says Nicholas King, of the Biomedical Ethics Unit in the Faculty of Medicine. In an effort to identify and summarize available evidence, King and his team conducted a systematic review of existing literature, comprehensively surveying the scientific literature and including only reports with quantitative evidence.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

not around here. dang doctors, pa's, pm, are scared to death of DEA to issue what the patient really needs. granted there are some drug seekers here, but if someone has multiple mri's, x rays, implants, screws, rods, etc., in their body, they should know which ones NEED pain killers and which ones maybe do not.

but this is the shore, most 'medical professionals' around here got their degree from vo-tech. they don't know what they don't know.

Anonymous said...

and this surprises you? Big Pharma is worse the oil industry... they are poisoning us and cure nothing ...they wish nothing but to bleed everydollar out of you dead person cannot buy prescription drugs..school shootings ..increase in violence and suicides rest is the fault of big pharma and the FDA