In a nationwide first, New Jersey authorizes paramedics to start addiction treatment at the scene of an overdose
New Jersey took an unprecedented step in emergency medicine this week: allowing paramedics to administer an addiction-treatment medicine immediately after reviving a patient from opioid overdose.
by Lev Facher
Jun 26, 2019
3 minutes
WASHINGTON — In a potential paradigm shift for addiction medicine, New Jersey’s health commissioner this week authorized paramedics to administer the drug buprenorphine to patients almost immediately after reviving them from an opioid overdose.
Paramedics would offer patients the drug, often referred to by the brand name Suboxone, after their overdose had been reversed using the opioid antidote naloxone. The first-in-the-nation model has a twofold purpose, health officials said: Beyond treating the withdrawal symptoms that can result from
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