Low Balling –
January 7, 2020 – Quast told Healio Primary Care that the inaccuracies he identified would not necessarily be replicated in a nationwide study. “It is difficult to predict the results of this analysis if applied to the entire United States,” he said. “States vary in terms of the shares of overdoses that are caused by specific drugs as well as how medical examiners are organized. However, if similar data were available for other states, it is likely that the number of deaths caused by specific drugs has been significantly undercounted, especially during the surge in fentanyl overdoses in the mid- to late-2010s.”
Orman Trent Hall, MD, an addiction medicine fellow in the department of psychiatry and behavioral health at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, also suggested that national figures are likely much higher than what the CDC’s database shows, warning that underestimates can hinder efforts to reduce the number of opioid deaths.
