Patch known as strongest of painkillers
JORDAN LITE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
May 20th 2008
You can't give someone a bigger blast of painkiller than that from a fentanyl patch.
The medication is so powerful and potentially addictive that the Drug Enforcement Agency tracks the prescriptions, which are reserved for people in chronic pain or agony at the end of their lives.
Patients must try other medicines, including morphine, before graduating to fentanyl.
"It's one of the strongest, if not the strongest medicine for pain," said Dr. Catherine Skae, director of the pediatric pain service at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx.
A manmade opiate, fentanyl patches are mostly used by patients with terminal cancer or chronic conditions like rheumatoid arthritis.
Doctors like the patch because it doesn't need to be swallowed and patients can leave it on for three days and forget about it.
It should never be used in people who haven't taken opiates before, said Dr. John Dombrowski, a board member of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. Too strong a dose can cause a patient to stop breathing.
"You never give this to someone who never has seen a narcotic before," Dombrowski said.
Referring to foster mom Joanne Alvarez, who told cops it was her prescription, Dombrowski said, "She was trying to sedate her kid and ended up sedating her permanently."
The patches, made in a range of doses by several companies, have come under scrutiny by the Food and Drug Administration. It most recently issued a safety warning about them in December.
The agency first issued an alert in 2005, after 120 people using patches made by Johnson & Johnson died. A subsidiary of J&J, PriCara, and an Icelandic manufacturer recalled fentanyl patches in February because of defects.
Police have not said which company made the patch that killed Taylor Webster.
"This is a tragic situation that appears to have resulted from inappropriate use," said Greg Panico, a spokesman for J&J's PriCara.
jlite@nydailynews.com