Wide spectrum of drugs laced with fentanyl

He said this the first time CIHI — which regularly analyzes health-care data collected from across Canada — has produced a report on opioid poisoning and not all provinces were able to report comprehensive data.

The challenge faced by CIHI is the fact that methods of data collected by hospitals and reported by provincial governments varies from province to province.

“Other provinces had some data (regarding opioid poisoning in emergency rooms), but it wasn’t complete enough,” Sajan said. “We do have complete information, however, on hospitalizations related to opioid poisoning.”

That data on hospital stays — which excludes visits to the emergency department — ranks St. Catharines–Niagara as 20th on a list of 34 Canadian municipalities.

The local rate of hospitalization from opioid poisoning is higher than Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City and Ottawa.

Sajan said the data for both hospital, and emergency room visits is “age- adjusted”—meaning it accounts for and filters out data related to the age of patients. Niagara, for instance, has a larger population of senior citizens with complex health-care needs than most other Canadian municipalities, something the age-adjusted data takes into account he said.

The age-adjusted rates — which is similar to how unemployment data is adjusted to account for seasonal employment trends — is a way to get under the raw numbers. So while a city like Toronto may have a higher number of total cases of opioid poisoning than St. Catharines, CIHI was interested in looking at the per capita rate of emergency room and hospital visits. That shows that for every 100,000 people in Niagara, 72.5 will visit the emergency department for opioid poisoning. The highest rate reported by CIHI was Calgary, with a rate of 99 per 100,000 people.

The highest rate of hospital stays according to CIHI is 37.9 in Kelowna, B.C. In Niagara, the rate is 18.3.

The report found that more than half of hospitalizations were the result of accidental overdoses, and

one-third were the result purposeful self-harm.

Sajan said the data shows the increasing toll opioids are taking on Canada’s health-care system.

Because the report is the first of its kind, the rates of emergency room visits and hospitalizations can’t be compared to past years.

However, Sajan said the data, when combined with other sources including coroner’s reports from the provinces, does show a startling trend — the harm caused by opioids is increasing, and it appears almost entirely due to the illicit opioid market and its current principal product fentanyl.

“Opioids prescribing is a serious issue, but we know the rate of prescribing has flattened out and in some cases even fallen. It is not falling quickly, but it is falling,” Sajan said. “At the same time, the level of harm continues to rise. This is entirely due to the illegal opioid market.”

Fentanyl has become a game changer in the illegal drug market. Police and social agencies — including Niagara Regional Police and Positive Living Niagara — report that fentanyl is being laced in a wide spectrum of street drugs including methamphetamines and heroin. In some cases, pure fentanyl — a drug more potent and lethal than heroin or morphine — is being sold as heroin to unsuspecting users. glafleche@postmedia.com Twitter: @grantrants