It is further estimated that about 67 percent of all such deaths were unintentional overdoses (ODs). Adverse results also occur in patients given opioids for therapeutic reasons, including, although uncommonly, serious respiratory depression.
Respiratory Depression
It is generally believed that the most common life-threatening complication of opioid use, whether therapeutic or illicit, is respiratory depression (loss of the ability to breathe automatically). Probably the most important action of morphine-like drugs in producing respiratory depression is the lessening of the sensitivity and responsivity of the brain's medullary respiratory center to carbon dioxide (CO2—the metabolic waste that circulates in the blood, derived from carbonic acid during animal respiration). Therefore, CO2 becomes an inefficient respiratory stimulant, and automatic breathing ceases.
Administering a specific opioid ANTAGONIST such as NALOXONE to patients with severely depressed respiration frequently produces a dramatic increase in the rate of respiration and the volume of air taken in per breath. This occurs when a partial or completely resensitized respiratory center is confronted with high brain levels of CO2. When the brain CO2 levels are dissipated as a consequence of the evoked excessive rate and volume of breathing (hyperpnea), the minute volume (the volume of air breathed per minute) decreases.
This is a free page. This page contains 185 words. This
article contains 4,040 words (approx. 13 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our Opioid Complications and Withdrawal Access Pass.
