Here are seven things to know about the drug:
- Fentanyl is up to 50 times more potent than morphine, leading to large numbers of accidental overdoses. The New York Times referred to the drug as heroin’s deadly cousin.
- Fentanyl is used sparingly for cancer patients who are already on painkillers but experience breakthrough pain, as many other analgesics carry fewer risks and effectively eliminate pain.
- While physicians are not advised to prescribe the drug for acute postoperative pain, some do, which can lead to serious patient complications.
- From 2000 to 2016, fentanyl was cited in 44,284 adverse reaction reports in the U.S., with 32,389 cases reported as serious.
- Name brands of fentanyl, including Subsys, Actiq, Fentora, Abstraland and Onsolis, are some of the most expensive analgesics on the market.
- Naxalone, the antidote to opioid overdoses, recently spiked in price, causing shortages in health centers across the country.
- The prescription rates for opioid painkillers vary largely from state to state. Potential factors for this variation include a lack of physician agreement on when to prescribe opioid pain medications, increased demand from patients who use opioids for non-medical purposes and the presence of pain clinics that prescribe large quantities to people who might not actually need them.
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