×
ADVERTISEMENT

DECEMBER 20, 2021

Investigators Propose Ranking Drugs by Risk for Respiratory Depression

Originally published by our sister publication, Pain Medicine News.

image

Lynn Webster, MD

Las Vegas—A method to screen and rank centrally acting drugs such as opioid analgesics, anxiolytics, antiepileptics and sedatives according to their risk for inducing or contributing to respiratory depression could help prevent overdose deaths, according to a new proposal.

Despite the high number of drug overdose deaths—approximately 71,000 in the United States in 2019 and estimates increasing