When the Heart Stops, Drugs Often to Blame

"Hidden" drug overdoses account for nearly 1 in 7 sudden cardiac deaths, a new study contends.

Researchers looked at more than 900 people in San Francisco who died of an apparent out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

Through autopsies and lab tests, they found that only 541 of those people (59 percent) actually met the criteria set by the World Health Organization for sudden cardiac death.

Of those cases, 13.5 percent (nearly 1 in 7) were due to a hidden overdose, with lethal levels of opioids found in 61 percent of them.

The study also found significant racial and gender differences. This highlights the importance of investigating apparent sudden cardiac death in women and different groups of people, according to the researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, and the City and County of San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

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