Hospitals typically use urine tests to detect just a handful of drugs and medical conditions. The substance abuse researchers decided to expand their urine testing technique for the first time to hospital settings, and link the test results to de-identified patient medical records. The researchers used sophisticated analyses of de-identified urine samples to detect drugs. Office of National Drug Control Policy, were generating a number of reports detailing illicit drug use patterns in criminal justice settings.

The physicians believed that knowing which drugs were in use might help tailor patient treatment.Īt the same time, researchers at the Center for Substance Abuse Research (CESAR) at the University of Maryland, College Park, with the support of the U.S. One doctor described 'atypical overdoses,' patients with breathing difficulties and constricted pupils who responded well to the opioid overdose-reversing drug naloxone, and then required sedation for acute agitation, violence and hyperactivity, all unrelated to opiate withdrawal. The objective of the study, which began in 2016, was to identify illicit drugs that caused overdoses in patients at two hospital emergency departments in Maryland.Įmergency physicians were battling a spike in accidental drug overdoses and related deaths, thought to be linked to a group of designer drugs called synthetic cannabinoids that mimic the chemicals in marijuana, known on the street as Spice or K2.

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