Many public health efforts in recent years have focused on preventing opioid overdose deaths, yet little is known about the long-term health effects of surviving an overdose. That’s why physician-scientist Paul Christine, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of general internal medicine in the University of Colorado Department of Medicine, led a novel study that aimed to uncover the prevalence of hypoxic-ischemic brain injury (HIBI) — a potentially debilitating condition that can result from an overdose.
“This brain injury is similar to a stroke, where someone does not get enough oxygen flow to their brain. It’s been hypothesized that this may be happening to a lot of people with opioid overdoses, but there were no big studies on how many survivors have evidence of this injury,” says Christine, who provides integrated primary care and addiction care at Denver Health. “This is our first attempt to understand if this is happening, how common it is, and the type of support people need when this happens.”
The study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, offers the first estimates of how many hospitalized people in the United States have HIBI after an opioid overdose. Christine and his co-investigators found that between 2016 and 2021, HIBI occurred in approximately 5.1% of hospitalizations for opioid overdose, and many of these cases were fatal or resulted in disabilities, often among people in their 30s.
We recently spoke with Christine about these findings, their significance, and the need for further investigations into the long-term health effects of surviving an opioid overdose.
The following interview has been edited and condensed.