Over the last two decades, prescription opioid-related overdose has emerged as a major public health threat. Today, nearly half of all U.S. opioid overdose deaths involve a prescription opioid, and every day, over 1,000 people are treated in emergency departments for misusing prescription opioids.
Understanding the risk factors of opioid overdose
Respiratory depression, or hypoventilation, is when the body’s breathing processes slows, inhibiting the proper exchange of gases to make a healthy, efficient breath.
Opioid-related overdoses involve life-threatening respiratory depression resulting from profound depression of the central nervous system – and this can happen even when a patient is taking opioids as prescribed.
Venebio Opioid Advisor educates clinicians, and ultimately patients, on the various risk factors that may increase the likelihood of opioid overdose or death due to an overdose. Some of those risk factors include concurrent morphine use, impaired liver or kidney function, and alcohol use – among a dozen others.
Fighting the epidemic with Venebio Opioid Advisor
The economic burden of the opioid overdose epidemic associated with prescription opioids exceeds a staggering $504 billion annually with workplace costs due to lost productivity and replacement wages equaling direct health care costs.
In response to the public health threat posed by the opioid epidemic, Venebio developed Venebio Opioid Advisor to support safer opioid prescribing. The tool integrates many medications and comorbidities which may interfere with opioids when used for their multidimensional primary indications — pain and opioid use disorder.