In western Wisconsin, a spike
in drug overdoses led the
city of La Crosse to issue a
safety alert in recent days.
What's going on when overdoses
were trending down?
We asked Dr. Chris Eberlein,
emergency medicine physician at
Gunderson Health System.
And doctor, thanks for being here.
Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for
having me.
So what are the overdose numbers
that led to this safety alert?
So it's more of a trend.
So we've been watching
overdose numbers really closely
ever since probably early
pandemic time, but only
in the last several years have we
really coordinated with
EMS, both first responders,
including fire, transport
agencies, some other
members of the county, Vivant
Health, some others that
respond to overdoses
and starting to pool data and
sharing what we're seeing in the
community.
So we had noticed,
and thankfully so in last year,
we had great numbers.
You know, we were still way too
high, but it was like a 60%
improvement year over year in
overdose deaths and responses.
So really a great trend, and we
were seeing that at
the beginning of this year as well.
And we would still go on about one
to two.
Overdose calls a week is
what kind of the trend was
throughout most of the year.
We get small spikes and we
meet once a week and we discuss the
data and
we were just watching it.
We had a few that were like three or
four in a week but didn't really
meet our threshold to make any sort
of announcement or
change our response.
And then over this course of
the last couple weeks in
late July, we were getting
over 10.
Responses in a week and so
you know you're talking you know
that's a five-fold increase from
what we were used to and
so that that really made us take
pause and then it happened again
in the next week as well
so so this is why we
we figured we better get some word
out figure out what we could do
as a community see if there's
anything we're missing and
hopefully prevent some people from
having a bad off.
Because you've said that you get
concerned when overdose cases begin
to increase in quick succession
like that.
And that's just a marker
for something going on.
Yeah, and usually it is
a change in supply,
change in use pattern, and
so we're really looking at trying to
figure out what that is.
We did figure out this one was,
and it was actually a
change of the supply of
not opiates actually.
What we were seeing is that fentanyl
was intermixed with other
stimulants, primarily cocaine
and methamphetamine.
So these users had
no idea that they were at risk of
an opiate overdose.
So do these synthetic opioids
combined with other drugs
like those of which you speak
render Narcan less effective?
They would not, Narcan would still
be very effective for these and
still a critical component
in our response.
And so is it known
where these drugs are coming from,
or is this just kind of the
beginning of an investigation
to understand the scope of
this?
Yeah, and unfortunately, we
usually, at our
level, don't ever get
that information of where these are
coming from.
That's more of a law enforcement.
Historically, being in La Crosse,
we're between two major metropolitan
areas as far as Chicago
and Minneapolis.
And so they come from one of those
two areas usually, at least that's
what I've been told by law
enforcement
So what is your message to people,
drug users, who might be
using these
substances and then
suddenly there's fentanyl mixed in?
What is your massage?
So there's a few things to be aware
of. One, any illegal drug
could have fentanyl in it.
It's something that is relatively
cheap to produce,
gets here in large quantities,
easily mixed with other drugs.
So I would assume that any drug that
you use could have Fentanyl on it.
Use Fentanil test strips to test
for Fentano in the drugs.
Those are legal and widely
available.
And then never use a loan.
Always have someone there that could
call 911 and
preferably give Narcan
as well as call 911.
But you have to have Narcan
available, will test your drugs,
and have a sober bystander
nearby that could
enact help if you need it.
How hard is it for you to
see this spike and treat people
experiencing it or to lose someone
to it?
It's always difficult.
This is something we've been dealing
with for years now.
The country's lost hundreds of
thousands of people to the opiate
epidemic.
I think it's touched just about
every family
at some point over
these last 15 years or
so since it started.
No community has gone without
impact.
When you see the spikes like
this you really want to try and get
because sometimes I feel that we can
get a little bit
complacent Especially when things
are going well And that
was one of my concerns with this,
you know the the overdoses have
gone down I
just want to make sure as
you know our whole team wanted to
make sure that everyone was aware
that it is still dangerous
and
Ideally, you, know that we could get
them to stop and get
help.
This is the first step.
You have to be alive to be able to
do that, and this is the stuff to
do.
Well, Dr. Chris Eberlein, thanks
very much.
For more on this and other issues
facing Wisconsin, visit our website
at pbswisconsin.org
and then click on the news tab.
That's our program for tonight.
I'm Frederica Freiberg.
Have a good weekend.
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