Hospitalisations for opioid overdoses have soared by 50 percent in a decade with fears Britain is now in the grip of a prescription painkiller addiction crisis.
Research by the School of Economics found 16,091 people were admitted to hospital due to the harmful effects of powerful painkillers in 2018.
This is up from just 10,805 admissions in 2008, aplprozolam online usa with treatment for opioid overdoses now costing the more than £10 million a year.
The study analysed hospital admissions in England for harmful use of opioids including codeine, morphine, co-codamol, fentanyl and tramadol.
They found the biggest increase was among middle-class Britons, with admissions up by 94 per cent in the most affluent areas of England.
Admissions among over-55s have also soared by 160 per cent over the past decade, according to the study published in the .
The authors of the research labeled their findings a ‘conservative’ estimate of the burden of treating opioids admissions on the NHS.
Experts have also warned the Covid pandemic is likely to have exacerbated the use of opioids , as millions of patients suffer in agony while trapped on record-high waiting lists for surgeries like hip replacements.
There are fears of a growing opioid crisis in the UK that could mirror the heartbreaking prescription painkiller epidemic in the US as new research shows hospitalisations for opioid overdoses have soared by 50 percent in England within a decade
Opioid hospitlisations in England (the black line) have grown to just over 16,000 cases in 2018 up from about 10,000 in 2008, a rise of about 50 per cent in a decade, this was driven primarily by a growth in the number of opioid poisonings which are considered more serious (the dotted blue line) than opioid abuse (the green dotted line)
This graph shows the the number of opioid hospitlisations in England broken down by age.While the vast majority of admissions were in people between the age of 35 and 44 the researchers noted there has been a 160 per cent rise in the number of hospitlisations for opioids in the over 55s in the decade of the study
This graph shows the relative change in opioid hospitlisation by number of health conditions over the decade of data included in the study.It shows an explosive growth in opioid cases among those with four or more health conditions (the solid blue, dotted green, and dotted black lines). The researchers said overall there was a 628 per cent increase in opioid hospitlisations among these patients
The study also found the biggest increase in opioid admissions was among more affluent Britons, with admissions up by 94 per cent in England’s least deprived areas (solid black line) between 2008 and 2018.This graph shows the relative growth by the deprivation level of patients’ residence
Researchers also found a six-fold increase in admissions for patients with four-or-more underlying health conditions, suggesting these patients may have misused the drugs after being prescribed opioids.
The study said the findings were consistent with ‘fears about adverse effects from long-term use of prescription opioids in patients combating cancer pain or chronic pain.’
Deaths from opioid overdoses rose by 20 per cent between 2011 and 2016, but have since stabilised to around 2,000 deaths per year.