Three Albertans are rushed to the emergency room every day due to opioid poisoning, shows a report released Wednesday.
The report, Hospitalizations and Emergency Department Visits Due to Opioid Poisoning in Canada, was conducted jointly by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse.
According to the national report the rate of opioid poisoning-related emergency department visits in Alberta increased by 53 per cent between 2010-11 and 2014-15. (More recent numbers show an 80 per cent increase in the past two years.)
As for hospitalizations, Alberta had the third highest rate in the country for 2014-15 at 18.6 per 100,000, after B.C. (19.1) and Saskatchewan (20.5).
While seniors saw the highest rates of hospitalization for opioid poisoning in the province, a health expert says the spike in the number of youth and young adults being treated by emergency departments is most alarming.
Between 2010-11 and 2014-15 the number of people aged 15 to 44 visiting the emergency department due to an opioid poisoning more than doubled to about 40 visits per 100,000.
This is due to a shift in the illicit drug market says Dr. Nicholas Mitchell, senior medical director of addiction and mental health strategic clinical network at Alberta Health Services.
“The reason we see high rates in seniors has to do with prescribed opioids,” said Mitchell. “But the increase in young people largely has to do with fentanyl.”
So far 338 Albertans have died from opioid overdoses this year. Fifty-seven per cent (193) of these deaths were related to fentanyl.
Deaths due to an apparent drug overdose related to fentanyl were also concentrated in younger aged individuals, according to an Oct. 27 Alberta Health report.
Meanwhile, the national report shows that Alberta saw a spike in the number of emergency visits due to opioid poisoning between 2013 and 2015, when accidental opioid poisonings increased by more than 59 per cent from 506 to 804.
This time period overlaps with the appearance of illicitly produced powdered fentanyl in the Canadian drug market.
Though the national report acknowledges the presence of fentanyl – an opioid 100 times more potent than oxycodone or morphine – in the drug market, it notes that its analysis was unable to specifically explore rates of fentanyl-related hospitalizations and emergency department visits.
But Mitchell says more recent provincial data confirms fentanyl is the culprit for the spike in both accidental poisonings and youth and young adult emergency department visits.
The Alberta Health report shows that 25- to 29-year-olds accounted for 25 per cent of opioid-related emergency visits between January 2014 and June 2016. Young adults presenting to the emergency for narcotic use were also less likely to have a prescription for opioids.
The same report shows the proportion of synthetic narcotics (which includes fentanyl) involved in emergency department visits increased by four times – from four per cent in 2014 to 16 per cent in 2016.
Mitchell says the “vast majority” of these synthetic poisoning events are the result of accidental overdoses.
“A large reason for this is that people are switching opioids,” said Mitchell. “Historically, people who are using illicit opioids would have been using oxycodone or heroin. More recently they’ve switched to fentanyl, and fentanyl is a much more dangerous opioid.”
Fentanyl is also being used as an ingredient in other drugs, including other opioids, but it is also in methamphetamines, cocaine and ectasy.
“They may not be intending to take an opioid at all,” said Mitchell.
