Clinical toxicology : the official journal of the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology and European Association of Poisons Centres and Clinical Toxicologists
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Clin Toxicol (Phila) · Jul 2009
Real-time surveillance of illicit drug overdoses using poison center data.
In early 2006, government and media sources reported that crime syndicates were mixing fentanyl with heroin. This was followed by an increase in heroin overdoses and opiate-related deaths. The most recent fentanyl outbreak illustrated the need for identifying and establishing effective and responsive real-time surveillance tools to monitor drug overdoses in the United States. ⋯ If there had been a real-time surveillance program using poison center data, the outbreak would have been identified 1 month before the initial postmortem reports to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the end of April 2006. Poison center data provide the potential for an earlier warning system than postmortem data sources, because the reports are usually made within hours of the exposure. Poison center data can be effectively used to monitor heroin-related exposures.