Fifteen people in West Philadelphia overdosed over the weekend on, what experts worry, could be crack cocaine laced with fentanyl or some other opioid.
An email sent to health care providers from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health warned that several of the patients suffered near fatal outcomes, including brain injury and cardiac arrest.
All 15 patients were admitted to the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and required higher than average doses of narcan, which reverses the effects of opioid overdoses.
“We’ve known for some time that fentanyl has made its way into the powdered coke supply,” Dr. Brian D. Work from Penn Presbyterian Medical Center said.
Work, who is also on the board of Prevention Point, said regular crack cocaine users “wouldn’t even remotely expect to overdose and neither would the people that [they’re] with.”
By contrast, “the intravenous drug community is relatively savvy” to what an overdose looks like.
Those who overdosed generally reported using their regular supply of crack cocaine only to experience shortness of breath before losing consciousness.
Local
Breaking news and the stories that matter to your neighborhood.
Most of the patients were older, black men from a relatively small section of West Philadelphia, including the Haverford North, Mantua and Powelton Village neighborhoods, according to Kendra Viner from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
"The demographic of this cohort ... indicates that this is a population that is not actively seeking opioids," she said. "Their tolerance is low because they’re not exposed on a regular basis."
Some of the patients are now in comas, according to Dr. Jeanmarie Perrone, professor of emergency medicine and the director of medical toxicology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
These symptoms are not consistent with cocaine overdoses, which typically result in increased heart rates, she said.
