A Canadian program aimed to prevent overdoses bye providing clients with a daily dose of prescription opioid tablets in order to protect them the increasingly dangerous street supply of the drugs.
TUESDAY, Sept. 20, 2022 -- As opioid overdose deaths continue to soar, a Canadian program points to one way to save lives: providing"safer" opioids to people at high risk of overdose.
The result was a rapid drop in emergency department trips and hospitalizations among the 82 clients studied, the researchers found. And over six years, there was not a single overdose death. The crisis has mainly been driven by illegally made versions of the painkiller fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin, health officials say. Illicit fentanyl is sold in various forms, including pills made to look like other prescription opioids. It's also commonly mixed into other illegal drugs, like cocaine and heroin, to boost their potency. The result is that users are often unaware they're taking fentanyl.
The researchers, led by Tara Gomes, of Unity Health Toronto, looked at data on all 94 clients who entered the program between 2016 and March 2019. They compared 82 of those people against 303 individuals diagnosed with opioid addiction who did not take part in the program. Opioid dependency itself can be treated with medication-assisted therapy, which involves counseling and medications like buprenorphine, methadone and naltrexone.
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