Introduction
A recent mortality study shows that people who have suffered a heart attack as a consequence of an opioid overdose may be renewed using naloxone.
The background comments of the researchers also suggested that naloxone works immediately to counteract overdose death by opioids by ensuring that opioids cannot bind onto brain receptors. As a number of researchers have pointed out, the medication mostly facilitates the recovery of the life of a human who stopped breathing as a result of an opiate overdose.
Opioids, however, can also cause cardiac arrest. It can precipitate a situation whereby the heart stops beating, normally due to an overdose.
‘There is no effective treatment known in this case which warrants possible Naloxone use, for which there is an urgent need for evidence,’ charged Dr. David Dillon, an assistant professor in emergency medicine at the University of California, Davis. “That is why drug-related cardiac arrests have become much more frequent in the past twenty years,”
Research highlights
Research indicates that (OD-) associated cardiac arrests are among the leading causes of fatalities in the population group of 25-64 years. A large number of people surrender to cardiac arrest resulting from a heart attack or electrical problem in the heart.
Cardiac arrest is documented by the American Heart Association to be involved in more than one in every 15 opioid overdose cases attended to by paramedics. To conduct this study, the authors reviewed information from three Northern California counties and 8,200 patients who received treatment for opioid-associated cardiac arrest in 2015-2023.
It was established that in one out of nine OD cardiac arrest patients who were given naloxone, the heart began beating on its own, and blood circulation resumed.
Expanding Naloxone Use
Analyses of the results show that out of every 26 patients who were managed inpatient treatment by giving them naloxone, one was alive and discharged from the hospital. In an interview with a university news release, Dillon said, “It was rather unexpected to find out that efficacy of naloxone in drug-related cardiac arrest was coupled with efficacy in non-drug related cardiac arrest. ” “This is important because it increases the understanding of the application of naloxone in managing drug-related, non-hospitalized cardiac arrest patients.”
