GEISINGER MEDICAL CENTER -- A doctor at Geisinger, whose family has been impacted by drug abuse, headed up a recent study about opioid overdoses.
The balance between alleviating pain and keeping people from overdosing is a popular topic in the medical world and out of it these days.
The last few years have seen what Dr. Margaret Jarvis calls an exponential increase in deaths from opiate overdoses.
A few examples of opiates include heroin, morphine, Percocet, and OxyContin, just to name a few.
"Now the CDC, not just me, the CDC, is calling this an epidemic," said Dr. Jarvis.
Dr. Jarvis is the medical director at Geisinger's Marworth treatment facility in Lackawanna County, which offers both inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation and often sees people in some of the most complex and severe addiction situations.
"It's not like people just started doing heroin. People have been using heroin for hundreds of years. But we've not seen this kind of death rate until just recently."
We asked Dr. Jarvis to talk about a study recently completed by one of her colleagues, Dr. Joseph Boscarino.
He's a senior scientist at Geisinger Medical Center near Danville who has been doing addiction research since the 1970s. his Own family, he says, has been hit with drug addiction.
"This is my way of trying to make an impact because it has affected my life over the years."
Dr. Boscarino and his team looked at a sample of patients in Geisinger's database going back 10 years.
They found 2,000 clear opiate overdoses; 20 percent were from heroin and the rest from prescription medication.
Many of the patients who overdosed also took medicine to treat depression or anxiety and many of them had other chronic diseases.
"Some had medical problems, so that's the next stage of research, (to) look at the causal facts in the population," said Dr. Boscarino.
"One of the things that struck me is that a large percentage of people who overdosed or died, close to 80 percent were unemployed," said Dr. Jarvis.
What that tells Dr. Jarvis is that life didn't go quite as planned for a lot of the people who ended up overdosing and she thinks that starts the conversation about how medical professionals can identify those who might be a risk in the future.
According to Dr. Boscarino, there are new drugs currently being developed to help addicts wean themselves from opiates.
He will continue his studies at Geisinger.
