Wisc. ER Doctor Says More Deadly Form of Heroin Might Increase Overdoses
Feb. 10--A more dangerous form of heroin is circulating on La Crosse streets, resulting in a spike in overdoses and raising the specter of potentially deadly cases -- perhaps causing one death already, said Dr. Chris Eberlein.
"The potential for death is big, from what I've heard," said Eberlein, an emergency room doctor at Gundersen Health System and medical director for Gundersen Tri-State Ambulance.
The stronger heroin may be the culprit in the death of a 29-year-old woman found Sunday in the 800 block of South Sixth Street, Eberlein suggested. The woman's name has not been released, but police have said she probably died of an illegal drug overdose.
"We may never find out" whether the bad batch caused her death, "but we might not know for months" until toxicology reports are available, he said.
Eberlein suspects that the heroin is laced with the synthetic opiate Fentanyl to stretch supplies. Fentanyl sometimes is hard to detect in tox screens, he said.
"What we've seen in the past is when too much Fentanyl is added, it can make the heroin 50 times more potent," Eberlein said. "The user doesn't know that even when they use the same volume, it is 50 times more potent and causes a significant overdose."
Users then go into respiratory failure and die of a heart attack, he said.
Overdose victims in these cases require repeated and higher doses of Narcan, the antidote for an opiate overdose, said Eberlein, who has advised Tri-State Ambulance crews to be on the lookout for such instances.
Eberlein, who said he became concerned about the occurrence of four to six cases this week, said one of the ER patients "said it was the strongest drug they had ever taken."
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