Fentanyl-Related Deaths in Ontario, Canada: Toxicological Findings and Circumstances of Death in 112 Cases (2002-2004)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In order to characterize fentanyl-related deaths in the province of Ontario, Canada, a retrospective study of all cases in which fentanyl was quantitated in blood was conducted for the time period between 2002 and 2004. A total of 112 fentanyl-related deaths were identified. Decedents ranged in age from 4 to 93 years and comprised 63 men and 49 women. A variety of routes of administration of the drug were identified: transdermal application of Duragesic patches, intravenous injection of patch contents or fentanyl citrate solution, oral/transmucosal administration, and volatilization and inhalation of Duragesic systems. Blood fentanyl concentrations were determined for all modes of drug administration and are provided. There were 54 cases in which death was attributed solely to fentanyl intoxication; the mean blood concentration was 25 microg/L (range: 3.0-383 microg/L). This concentration range overlapped with blood fentanyl concentrations measured among cases where the presence of the drug was considered incidental. For example, a mean blood concentration of 12 microg/L was observed among 12 cases of natural death (range: 2.7-33 microg/L). Detailed case reports of six individuals are also included and provide additional insight into the use of this drug for both therapeutic and illicit means.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".