BC Centre for Disease Control says cases of encephalopathy just 'tip of the iceberg,' because not everyone who experiences an overdose accesses health care.
Canada’s toxic drug crisis is not only killing thousands of people each year, it also causes lasting harms for those who survive overdoses.
Fentanyl and other opioids can slow or stop breathing during an overdose, which can starve the brain of oxygen, similar to a stroke. This can lead to limb weakness, memory loss, vision loss and impairment of motor skills, Dr. Slaunwhite explained. The study, published in July in the journal Substance Abuse, Treatment, and Policy, examined the health data of a random sample of more than 824,000 B.C. residents. It found 1 per cent of the 5,357 people who had experienced one or more overdoses between 2015 and 2019 had encephalopathy, or brain injury. By comparison, less than 0.4 per cent, of the those who had never had an overdose had encephalopathy.
A March 2021 report from the Public Health Agency of Canada that looked at national statistics, excluding Quebec, found roughly 4 per cent of the 4,433 hospital admissions for opioid-related poisoning between April, 2019 and March, 2020 also involved a brain injury caused by lack of oxygen. The most recent national data, released in June, showed a total of 7,328 apparent opioid deaths occurred in 2022, which is an average of 20 deaths per day.
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