Opioid-related hospital visits have skyrocketed and are flooding emergency rooms around the country, according to a new study released by the Agency for Health Healthcare Research and Quality on Tuesday.
The study showed that opioids were connected with 1.27 million emergency room visits or inpatient stays in a single year, The Washington Post reported.
"Between 2005 and 2014 there was a dramatic increase nationally in hospitalizations involving opioids: the rate of opioid-related inpatient stays increased 64 percent, and the rate of opioid-related emergency department visits nearly doubled," said the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality report's introduction.
"… In a previous statistical brief, AHRQ reported that across states in 2014 the rate of opioid-related inpatient stays varied more than five-fold and the rate of opioid-related ED visits varied more than 10-fold," the study continued.
The Washington Post said the biggest increase in hospitalization and emergency room treatment for opioids was among people ages 25 to 44, a rise that has being seen in every racial and ethnic group other than Asian Americans since 2010.
Opioids – ranging from prescription painkillers to heroin and fentanyl – have caused the majority of fatal overdoses, according to the Post.
The AHRQ report said Massachusetts consistently ranked as having among the highest rates of opioid-related inpatient stays across all patient sex and age groups. Connecticut, Maryland, and Washington ranked among the states with the highest rates in all but one sex or age group.
Iowa, Nebraska, Texas, and Wyoming consistently ranked as having among the lowest rates of opioid-related inpatient stays across all patient sex and age groups, according to the report. Georgia, Kansas, South Carolina, and South Dakota ranked among the states with the lowest rates in all but one sex or age group.
"Our data tell us what is going on," report co-author Anne Elixhauser, a senior research scientist at AHRQ, told the Post. "They tell us what the facts are. But they don't give us the underlying reasons for what we're seeing here."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlighted the increase in drug overdose deaths in a report a year ago.
"The United States is experiencing an epidemic of drug overdose (poisoning) deaths," the CDC report from January 2016 said. "Since 2000, the rate of deaths from drug overdoses has increased 137 percent including a 200 percent increase in the rate of overdose deaths involving opioids (opioid pain relievers and heroin).
"… During 2014, a total of 47,055 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States, representing a one-year increase of 6.5 percent, from 13.8 per 100,000 persons in 2013 to 14.7 per 100,000 persons in 2014," the CDC report continued.
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