The ER visit that can turn your life upside down

The numbers are out… and they don’t look good.

Last year alone, opioids killed an average of 91 people in the U.S. every day. And despite increased awareness from doctors, patients, and local health departments, deaths due to opioids in the U.S. are going up, not down.

In fact, last week’s issue of the CDC’s “Morbidity and Weekly Report” (what a cheery name!) shows that those numbers are continuing to rise – with other CDC statistics putting the toll of Americans falling victim to these drugs daily at 115.

Even when taken as directed, doctor-prescribed opioid drugs have become the gateway to addiction for untold numbers of people who never believed that they would fall into that trap.

And for some, becoming hopelessly hooked on opioids begins with a visit to the ER following some painful accident or illness.

To see how those deadly dots connect, emergency medicine expert Dr. Sean Michael, with the University of Colorado School of Medicine, decided to take a good look at the practice of prescribing opioid drugs in the ER.

And his findings could very well explain how these highly addictive and risky meds have ensnared so many unsuspecting people – people who have died trying to live their lives without pain.

That’s why whenever and wherever you’re handed an Rx, you’ve got to ask one vital question.

The survey says…

ER docs have seen it all when it comes to opioid overdoses. So, they certainly couldn’t be part of the problem. Or could they?

That’s what Dr. Michael set out to investigate.

First, he gathered data from four hospitals about which pain drugs ER docs were dispensing. Then, he gave 109 of the physicians in those hospitals a pop quiz – where did each doctor stand on a pain-med pie chart that he devised to show the number of pills being dispensed in that emergency room?

Two-thirds of doctors surveyed grossly underestimated how often they had prescribed opioid drugs. Apparently, they had no idea that they were giving these meds out like they’re candy!

“Most believe they are doing the right thing,” Dr. Michael said.

But once they were made aware of their actual prescribing habits, the number of prescriptions they wrote for OxyContin or Vicodin or Percocet dropped!

Of course, that’s just four hospitals out of thousands across the U.S. If those doctors didn’t realize what they were doing, chances are, most others don’t either.

Experts have tallied that if things don’t start changing for the better, the opioid epidemic in American could claim as many as a million lives by 2020 (just two years away!).

Landing in the ER, however, isn’t the only way you can get hooked on these drugs.

A study done last year by the University of Michigan found that many patients are also likely to be “introduced” to these meds following surgical procedures. More often than not, those are seniors – folks who managed to soldier through decades of various accidents, illnesses, aches, and pains without turning to opioids.

And in that study, those newbies were the ones with the greatest risk of becoming addicted.

So, before you take any kind of med given to you for pain, ask your doctor (yes, even in the ER) if it’s an opioid. If so, find out what other options — including non-drug treatments such as acupuncture, topical creams like arnica, massage, and physical therapy — are available.

Last year, a large study out of Australia found that acupuncture was as effective in treating ER patients in “considerable pain” as these risky addictive meds — even when used in place of morphine!

It’s only as more and more doctors and patients start saying “No” to these devious drugs that we’ll be able to close the curtain on this national nightmare.

“ER docs prescribe more opioids than they realize” Robert Preidt, March 30, 2018, WebMD, webmd.com