Front-line medics, doctors battle drug overdoses as region witnesses rise in substance abuse
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Pittsburgh paramedic Dan Capatolla, like other first-responders, emergency room doctors and, in some cases, medical examiners, is seeing an explosion of heroin overdoses in the region. -
Dr. Rich Sullivan is an emergency room doctor at Jefferson Regional Hospital, where he has seen a rise in the number of patients being brought into the ER due to heroin overdoses. -
Dr. Karl Williams, the Allegheny County medical examiner, in the toxicology lab of his office in the Strip District.
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City paramedics were dispatched several weeks ago to a traffic accident in Beechview: A car had sheared off a utility pole.
When medic Dan Capatolla and his crew arrived, they found a 20-something driver uninjured by the accident but barely breathing. An uninjured passenger, his girlfriend, said they had just shot up heroin.
The patient was in respiratory failure -- the effect that an overdose of heroin or other opioids such as the painkiller OxyContin, can have on the brain. If untreated, the driver would stop breathing entirely. Then his heart would stop beating and he would die.
In such overdoses, medics use a breathing bag to get oxygen into the patient's system, then administer Narcan, an opioid antagonist that reverses the drug's effects. Overdose victims immediately wake up, no longer feeling any effects of the drug.
PG CHARTSThe medics saved the young man that day, but Mr. Capatolla and others on the front lines are facing more work than ever as the region is experiencing unprecedented levels of heroin use and opioid abuse.
"It's like 'Groundhog Day,' " said Mr. Capatolla, a city medic for nearly 30 years, referring to the 1993 movie in which the character portrayed by Bill Murray experiences the same day over and over. Medics are getting so many calls for overdose patients -- in cars, restaurant and gasoline station bathrooms, residences, alleys -- "that it has kind of become routine," he said.
"There's not a week that goes by that we don't wake up one heroin overdose," and oftentimes more, Mr. Capatolla said. "And it could be in any part of the city. There are no [boundary] lines for heroin."
The suburbs are likewise experiencing an explosion of heroin use.
PG ARCHIVEFirst Published October 2, 2011 12:00 am
