The emergency room at Fletcher Allen Health Care treated eight heroin overdose cases Tuesday - more than the hospital normally sees in three months.
Dr. Steve Leffler is an emergency room physician and the hospital's chief medical officer. He said the eight cases on Tuesday were all treated with Narcan, which restores breathing in the case of an overdose.
"Our big concern is that whatever is out there is very potent," he said. "Some of them have required multiple doses of Narcan and we're concerned that there could be fatality."
"People believe they're using the same amount as they typically do, but it's causing them much more serious side effects, like they stop breathing." - Dr. Steve Leffler
Leffler said all eight of the patients reported they overdosed on heroin, but officials don't yet know if the drug has been cut with Fentanyl, a powerful painkiller that caused many overdose deaths - including three in Vermont - earlier this year.
"Most of the time it has to do with the potency has changed somehow so either it wasn't cut the same or it is a different form of the drug or something like that," he said.
"We don't know yet,"Leffler added. "We just know that in a very short period of time we've seen a huge increase of overdoses and that makes us fearful that what's out there, people believe they're using the same amount as they typically do, but it's causing them much more serious side effects, like they stop breathing."
