What Your Doctor May Not Know About Methadone

Frank's family called me a year ago after Frank went to a local hospital for a stomach ache. The physicians suspected an ulcer or a bleed and decided to keep him overnight. Frank had a history of back surgery and had been on 100 mg of morphine daily for a year. When Frank was admitted, he asked if he could make a call and get a family member to bring his morphine for his chronic back issue. The physician told Frank "no" and said they would take care of getting him the morphine from the hospital pharmacy. For whatever reason, Frank's gastroenterologist called in a neurologist to consult on getting Frank his morphine. The neurologist told Frank she was going to give Frank methadone instead of morphine-- that it was also an analgesic and would work like morphine. So the neurologist wrote an order for methadone 100 mg to replace Frank's 100 mg morphine. The mistake in the neurologist's conversion of morphine to methadone cost Frank his life. He went into respiratory depression within several hours, coded, was resuscitated and eventually transferred to ICU in a coma on a ventilator.
Phyllis Lile-King

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