American hospitals are facing a dangerous shortage of opioids for patients undergoing surgery, fighting cancer or suffering traumatic injuries, even as the powerful painkillers flood communities nationwide and fuel widespread addiction, CNN reported Monday.
The shortfall of such drugs as morphine, Dilaudid and fentanyl, which has intensified since last summer, has been triggered by government efforts to reduce addiction by restricting drug production, as well as manufacturing setbacks.
The shortages have raised the risk of mistakes, because it has forced nurses to administer second-choice drugs or deliver standard drugs differently. The Institute for Safe Medication Practices has reported that these problems have led to at least a few instances in which patients received potentially harmful doses.
The shortage crisis is significant enough in some places that the American Society of Anesthesiologists has said that some elective surgeries, which can include gall bladder removal and hernia repair, have been postponed.
In a more ominous sign, a coalition of professional medical groups declared that the shortages are "potentially life threatening" in a letter it sent last month to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
CNN cited several common mistakes harmful to patients that could be made, including the following example explained by National Nurses United union spokeswoman Marti Smith.
"If your drug comes in a prefilled syringe and at one milligram, and you need to give one milligram, it's easy," she said. "But if you have to pull it out of a 25 milligram vial, you know, it's not that we're not smart enough to figure it out, it just adds another layer of possible error."
Exacerbating the problem of the shortages has been manufacturing problems at Pfizer, which controls at least 60 percent of the market of injectable opioids. A company spokesman said its shortage started last June when the company cut back production while upgrading its factory in McPherson, Kansas.
Pfizer is not currently distributing pre-filled syringes "to ensure patient safety," it said, because of problems with a third-party supplier, according to CNN.
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