Cardiac Arrests Linked to Drug ODs Are Killing the Healthy Young

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter  |  Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

THURSDAY, Feb. 1, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Drug overdoses resulting in cardiac arrest occur most often among young adults, a new study finds.

People tend to have OD-related cardiac arrests at an average age of 39, compared to an average age of 64 for those suffering cardiac arrests not related to opioids, results show.

“Many communities face ongoing challenges with increases in drug overdoses, which tend to affect a younger, healthier population,” said lead researcher Aditya Shekhar, a medical student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

“Given the recent increases in drug overdose-associated deaths, there is immense public health interest to better understand these types of cardiac arrests and how to treat them,” Shekhar added.

A cardiac arrest occurs when an electrical problem in the heart causes it to stop beating.

Cardiac arrests triggered by opioid overdose are a significant cause of death among adults ages 25 to 64, according to the American Heart Association. More than 15% of opioid OD emergencies requiring paramedic response involve cardiac arrest.

For this study, researchers analyzed more than 360,000 cardiac arrest cases between 2017 and 2021. Of those, 8% were caused by drug ODs.

Overall, cardiac arrests related to opioid overdose occurred in people decades younger than the typical patient, researchers found.

People who suffered drug-related cardiac arrests also had fewer other chronic conditions that put their overall health at risk, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, kidney disease, heart problems, lung disease or stroke.

However, OD-related cardiac arrests also had significantly higher survival rates and better brain outcomes compared to those from other causes. 

About 15% of people with drug overdose cardiac arrests survived without significant brain damage, meaning they can perform daily living activities without assistance.

By comparison, only 7% of patients with non-drug OD arrests survived without brain damage.

The new study was published Jan. 31 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

“We were surprised that survival rates and neurological outcomes were significantly better in patients with non-shockable heart rhythms from drug-related cardiac arrests, even after controlling for age and other factors,” senior researcher Dr. Ryan Coute, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Alabama-Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine, said in a journal news release.

Researchers also found that only one in five cardiac arrests from drug ODs were witnessed by a bystander, compared to nearly half of cardiac arrests triggered by other causes.

The statistics revealed in this paper highlight why America’s opioid epidemic has made CPR an even more valuable lifesaving skill, Shekhar noted.

"When someone has a cardiac arrest, their brain is starved of oxygen and brain cells begin dying off within minutes,” Shekhar said. “Performing CPR has been shown to dramatically improve outcomes for cardiac arrest by helping get blood to the brain quickly.”

Cardiologist Dr. Cameron Dezfulian said more research is needed to figure out why drug OD cardiac arrests appear to be less damaging to a patient’s brain.

“Additional research is needed to determine if the non-overdose patients have cardiac arrests that last longer, if they have another cardiac arrest or any other complication, each of which may play a role in poorer survival and outcomes,” said Dezfulian, medical director of the Adult Congenital Heart Disease ICU at Texas Children’s Hospital.

“We also need more research to understand the biological and physiological effects of naloxone, to determine if it may contribute,” Dezfulian added.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about opioid overdose.

SOURCE: American Heart Association, news release, Jan. 31, 2024