SOFT 2004 Meeting Abstracts - Society of Forensic Toxicologists

P38
TREND OF ACUTE NARCOTISM DURING THE LAST TEN YEARS
Nadia Fucci"', Nadia De Giovanni, Fabio De Giorgio, Marcello Chiarotti
Istituto di Medicina Legale e delle Assicurazioni, Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, L.go F. Vito,1 ­
00168 Roma (Italy)
Since 1993 the Laboratory of Forensic Toxicology at the Catholic University of Rome has evaluated the
trends of deaths from narcotism ..We have already studied previous periods and our data were compared
with D.C.S.A. (Dipartimento Centrale Servizi Antidroga - Central Antidrug Department) and GTF (Gruppo
Tossicologi Forensi - Italian Forensic Toxicologist Association) informations. In this paper we present a
statistical analysis of the lethal intoxications in the period 2000-2003 and compare to two prior periods
(period A 1993-1996; period B 1997-1999).
Annually cruel deaths observed by the Legal Medicine Institute of Catholic University range between 300
to 400. About 18-22% of these cases are submitted for toxicologic analyses; less than 10% of total deaths
could be referred to lethal intoxications.
Analysis of data showed interesting observations relative to the last ten years:
• A decreasing in overdose cases
• Morphine alone is stiil the main drug accounting for death
• An increase in methadone-related-deaths
• A slight reduction in cases of acute cocaine intoxications
A separate study on morphine and ethanol related deaths was performed; this study showed that the
presence of ethanol higher than 0.5 gil was more significant when morphine concentrations ranged
between 20 and 250 ng/m!.
Our study suggests the usefulness of periodic review of mortality phenomena related to drug intoxications.
Keywords: acute narcotism, statistical evaluation, postmortem
Page 373