Heroin or fentanyl: Prevalence of confirmed fentanyl in ED patients with suspected heroin overdose.

ABSTRACT:

Background

United States drug overdose deaths are being driven by the increasing prevalence of fentanyl, but whether patients are knowingly using fentanyl is unclear. We examined the analytical confirmation of fentanyl in emergency department (ED) patients with documented heroin overdose.

Hypothesis

We hypothesized that the proportion of fentanyl and fentanyl analogs would be higher than that of confirmed heroin.

Methods

This is a subgroup analysis from a prospective multicenter consecutive cohort of ED patients age 18+ with opioid overdose presenting to 10 US sites within the Toxicology Investigators Consortium from 2020 to 2021. Toxicology analysis was performed using liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry. De-identified toxicology results

SUBMITTER: Shastry S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11331419 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature