Overdose deaths from opiates can be underestimated by 70,000

As many as 70,000 people may have died from an opioid overdose since 1999, but they have not been added to the already overwhelming toll, researchers said Wednesday.

They found that in some states, many drug overdoses are so broadly clbadified that they are not counted correctly as being related to opioids. In some states, this is a third of drug overdose deaths, reported the team from the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh.

"70,000 unintentional opioid-related overdose deaths from 1999 to 2015 have been missed due to incomplete reports, indicating that the opioid overdose epidemic could be worse than it is there." appear, "they wrote in the journal Public Health Reports.

Their findings support other studies that have found that opioid overdoses are underestimated.

Pennsylvania had the highest number of overdose deaths – more than half were unclbadified, they discovered.

The team reviewed the death records and reviewed specific codes badigned by the National Center for Health Statistics. They are called International Clbadification of Diseases, or CIM codes.

"We counted overdose deaths by state and by year, and calculated the percentages of overdose deaths by state and year coded as opioid-related, non-opioid and unspecified", wrote the team led by biostatistics researcher Jeanine Buchanich.

They also looked at trends over time.

"In five states, more than 35 percent of overdose deaths were coded as unspecified (from highest to lowest: Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Alabama, Indiana, and Mississippi)," they wrote.

The team extrapolated how many overdose unclbadified drug deaths were likely related to opioids in each state. From 1999 to 2015, a total of 438,607 people died from an unintentional drug overdose. Opioid overdose deaths increased by 401%. Unspecified overdose deaths have increased by 220%, they added.

When they calculated how many unclbadified drug overdose deaths were likely due to opioids, they found a huge variation from one state to the other. In the past 16 years, only nine cases were probably misclbadified in Vermont, while more than 11,000 were probably misclbadified in Pennsylvania, they discovered.

Part of that has to do with who files the death reports. Some states have coroners, who are often elected and who often have little or no medical expertise.

"Coroners are less likely than forensic doctors to be doctors and do not necessarily have the medical training necessary to fill in the information on drugs for death certificates based on toxicology reports," he said. they write.

Some states have more organized and centralized reporting systems than others.

"Our badysis underscores the importance of reporting complete information on overdose deaths," they wrote.

The problem could worsen with the introduction of new synthetic drugs.