I Believe My Dad Died From Opana Ir

My dad had a surgery done on his shoulder and they prescribed her Opana IR 20mg. He had late stage COPD and he wasn't taking any narcotic pain medication prior the surgery. I take Opana myself and it a powerful medication. I know these type of medicines can affect your breathing at high doses. I know Opana is two times stronger the oxycodone. So it is like taking 40 mg of oxycodone. I don't know why they didn't give him like hydrocodone or oxycodone instead at a lower dose. It would been different if he was taking these class of medication where he would been use to them in his system. He was very doped up when he can home that day he was never fully awake after leaving the hospital my mom gave him the medicine about 4 hours after getting home. He fell to sleep in his favorite chair so my mom left him in the living room and she got up at 3:00 am to check on him he was gray in color and cold that when she knew he was dead. So she called 911 and they came out and confirmed that he was dead. So the police stay at the house and then my mom called me at 3:47 am so I got ready gram my daughter and wife and rushed over. So my mom, sister, brother-in-law, wife, my daughter, and me got to spend about 2 hours with his body until the funeral home came by to get his body. He wasn't in the best health so they didn't do a autopsy which I was trying to get them to do it because I was pretty sure that was what killed him. It was funny that the doctor and the anesthesiologist both called and they seemed kinda weird. So I think they thought about something they did wrong. I don't know for sure what killed him but I'm thinking it was the Opana high dose. If someone has a advanced stage COPD and you give him a high dose of a narcotic medicine that will affected their breathing why would you prescribe such a high dose. Precocet 7.5/325 or Vicodin 10/325 would give enough pain relief without affecting the breathing as much as taking 5 times as much of the Precocet or 10 times of Vicodin. I'm just wondering what is your opinion on what happen to my dad. The surgery was to remove a bone spur on his surgery.

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You should send this to ISMP and report the medication error at consumermedsafety.org

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@Jason

I'm terribly sorry to hear about what happened to your dad. From your description, I can't help but feel the same way about Opana (Oxymorphone) being the culprit. The US National Institute of Health lists the following symptoms of an overdose of Opana - which I'd imagine he'd probably be more susceptible to without a tolerance:

no blood pressure or pulse
not breathing
severe sleepiness or unusual drowsiness
stopping of heart
cold and clammy skin

Ref: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0046215/#DDIC602601.side_effects_section

Aside from Anna's suggestion in post #1, you could also report this incident to the FDA's MedWatch Program at: fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch

Once again, I'm very sorry for your loss. In this day and age, you'd think more doctor's would know better than to start someone off on a super strong pain med without working their way up gradually over an extended period of time. One lesson to take away from this is that when we put our lives in the hands of someone else (such as our doctor), it's easy to give up our freedom to think/act on our own will (assuming that they know "everything"). This is why it's always important to research what we put into our bodies before hand.

I sincerely hope you're able to find tranquility and peace of mind when all is said and done. Best wishes to you and your dad who I believe is now in a better place.

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