Dangerous drug supply:’ Opioid overdoses have Edmonton hospitals, firefighters, paramedics grappling with patients
Firefighters, paramedics and Edmonton’s busiest emergency department are scrambling to stay on top of surging accidental opioid poisonings that in some cases demand mega-doses of Naloxone to treat.
Dr. Shazma Mithani, a physician at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in central Edmonton, says the facility has always seen its share of opioid poisoning patients come into the emergency department due to the geographic location. Over the past several months, however, there has been a “dramatic, noticeable increase” in the volume of those patients.
“Unfortunately also what that means is that the more kinds of patients that we’re seeing that are seriously poisoned with opioids come in, the more serious bad outcomes that they’re having,” Mithani said.
“We’re seeing deaths, we’re seeing patients have to have breathing tubes put in, have to go to ICU, just because of the dangerous drug supply that’s out there. Even very high doses of Naloxone aren’t effective in some cases at reversing the effects of the opioid.”
She said two years ago, she would personally see about one opioid poisoning during her shift, but now she can see upwards of four poisonings in one shift.
Between January and May of this year, 624 Albertans died from accidental drug poisonings, a 41 per cent increase over the same time period in 2020.
Mithani said the main concern for opioid poisonings is that the patients may not be breathing. Often, paramedics will have already administered Naloxone to these patients out in the community but it has not worked, so when they are brought to the hospital, they are taken immediately to the department’s resuscitation room.
“We get a very brief quick report and the nurses are in there right away, getting the patient hooked up to monitors, getting an IV if they don’t already have an IV with the paramedics, and just giving Naloxone as quickly as possible through the IV,” Mithani said.
