Despite all the efforts to control opioid crisis, since 2011, drug and substance overdose deaths have risen by 54 percent in five years, up from 41,340 to 63,632 in 2016.
Those deaths are hiding some very important vital statics, there are a number of trends emerging from within. Here is one alarming trend from those deaths.
A report released recently by National Vital Statistics Reports, identifies the specific drugs involved most frequently in drug overdose deaths in the United States from 2011 through 2016.
Methods used in the creating the report involves, Record-level data from the 2011–2016 National Vital Statistics System–Mortality files were linked to electronic files containing literal text information from death certificates. Drug overdose deaths were identified using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision underlying cause-of-death codes X40–X44, X60–X64, X85, and Y10–Y14. Drug mentions were identified by searching the literal text in three fields of the death certificate: the causes of death from Part I, significant conditions contributing to death from Part II, and a description of how the injury occurred. Contextual information was used to determine drug involvement in the death. Descriptive statistics were calculated for drug overdose deaths involving the 10 most frequently mentioned drugs. Deaths involving more than one drug (e.g., a death involving both heroin and cocaine) were counted in all relevant drug categories (e.g., the same death was included in counts of heroin deaths and in counts of cocaine deaths).
Results are amazing and among drug overdose deaths that mentioned at least one specific drug, the 10 most frequently mentioned drugs during 2011–2016 included fentanyl, heroin, hydrocodone, methadone, morphine, oxycodone, alprazolam, diazepam, cocaine, and methamphetamine. Oxycodone ranked first in 2011, heroin during 2012–2015, and fentanyl in 2016. During the study period, cocaine consistently ranked second or third. From 2011 through 2016, the age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths involving heroin more than tripled, as did the rate of drug overdose deaths involving methamphetamine. The rate of drug overdose deaths involving fentanyl and fentanyl analogs doubled each year from 2013 through 2016, from 0.6 per 100,000 in 2013 to 1.3 in 2014, 2.6 in 2015, and 5.9 in 2016. The rate of overdose deaths involving methadone decreased from 1.4 per 100,000 in 2011 to 1.1 in 2016. The 10 most frequently mentioned drugs often were found in combination with each other. The drugs most frequently mentioned varied by the intent of the drug overdose death. In 2016, the drugs most frequently mentioned in unintentional drug overdose deaths were fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine, while the drugs most frequently mentioned in suicides by drug overdose were oxycodone, diphenhydramine, hydrocodone, and alprazolam.
Complete 14 page report could be found here.
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