G. Eric Nielson & Associates, LLC

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Killer Pain Killers, Part 2


I recently posted about the dangers of opioid analgesics. Today, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that fatalities from prescription drugs occur have increased drastically since 1991, and now occur almost daily--and those are just numbers from Utah, not the whole country.

According to the article, written by Lisa Rosetta, "Utah now loses more people each year to lethal combinations of drugs--such as methadone, oxycodone and fentanyl--than it does to car crashes."

As startling as that is, what's worse is that some of these deaths may be due to careless prescriptions by physicians. The report continues:

"A recent federal study found that Utah leads the nation in the nonmedical use of prescription pain medications, with 6.5 percent of people age 12 or older having used these medications without a doctor's order in the past year....Multiple factors are driving the problem, Grey said. More prescription drugs are being doled out by doctors - as are more complicated, long-duration drugs, such as methadone. That drug, which can linger in a person's body for up to 100 hours, was implicated in many of the overdose cases, [Medical Examiner Dr. Todd] Grey said in an earlier interview. Seventy percent of those deaths occurred in either the first week the person was prescribed the drug or after their dosage was changed."

As discussed in my previous post, this is often because longer lasting drugs are replaced by fast-acting versions. This can have a "double-up" effect that results in fatal overdose.

Another part of the problem is that these drugs are aggressively marketed by their manufacturers. Often, the marketing understates or misrepresents the risks of the drug. For instance, the makers of OxyContin were recently fined $634.5 million for intentionally understating the risk of addiction. Nevertheless, in exchange for various perks from pharmaceutical sales reps, physicians will take patients off of one drug, and replace it with a different brand. But if a physician does so without appreciating the possible interim reactions during the transition, and someone is injured or dies as a result, it is medical malpractice.

Unfortunately, as the Tribune article points out, "David Sundwall, the state's health department director, said prescribing strong painkillers - and for long periods of time - has become the standard of care."

What that means is that more and more doctors are prescribing greater quantities of these dangerous drugs. If you suspect that a loved one has died because of complications related to prescription painkillers, you deserve some answers. The Utah medical malpractice lawyers at G. Eric Nielson & Associates can give them to you. Call us at (801) 424-9088, or toll free at (866) 605-4556 to speak with an attorney at no cost. You can also contact us online to schedule a free, confidential consultation today.

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