By Pat Anson, Editor

Emergency room visits for opioid overdoses have soared by 30 percent in 16 states, according to a new Vital Signs report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC called the report a “wake-up call to the fast-moving opioid overdose epidemic.”

Between July 2016 and September 2017, there were over 142,000 suspected opioid overdoses treated in hospital emergency rooms in the 16 states. Overdoses increased for men and women in all age groups, in all regions of the country, and in rural and urban areas.

The new report does not specify how many patients died or if the overdoses involved prescription opioids or illegal opioids like heroin and illicit fentanyl. A previous report by the CDC indicated that over half the nation’s fatal overdoses are now linked to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid increasingly available on the black market.