United States: Matthew Perry, who is famous for his absolute role in Friends, sadly passed away a year ago after an overdose of ketamine, a drug used for anesthesia. His autopsy shows that the ketamine caused him to lose consciousness and also drown in his jacuzzi. Now, new reports from the CDC show that Perry’s death is also a part of a growing number of Americans who have died from this ketamine overdoses.
Analyzing the data from a national database of drug overdoses, the authors estimated counts for July 2019 through June 2023. It also included data from death certificates and reports from coroners and medical examiners in 44 states and the District of Columbia.
Therefore, the research concluded that ketamine was involved in overdoses of drugs in less than 1% of the cases.
However, the number of cases is slowly rising, from 0.3 to 0.5 percent over the duration of the study, reported a team of authors that included Alana Vivolo-Kantor. She works as an associate director for science at CDC’s Division of Overdose Prevention.
As reported by HealthDay, Even those seemingly small percentages represent a lot of lost lives: The combined total of the study period were 912 fatalities involving fatal overdose and the presence of ketamine while 440 fatalities involved ketamine as the cause of death.
Specifically, in 24 cases ketamine only was the cause of death due to overdose.
However, “overdose deaths involved other substances in nearly 100% of cases,” including different types of fentanyl, methamphetamine or cocaine, according to the research team.
Most of the deaths occurred in the young with over 35 percent of the people who died having taken ketamine being aged between 25 and 34 years.
According to the report, ketamine overdose victims include about three-quarters white males.
The research team argues that much more needs to be done to track and fully appreciate the risks associated with ketamine, which can lead to ‘respiratory, cardiovascular and neuropsychiatric complications.’