GETCHELL — It didn’t take long.
Less than two weeks after getting training, a Snohomish County Sheriff’s deputy brought a woman who’d overdosed on heroin back from the edge of death.
Deputy Jacob Navarro administered a nasal spray version of naloxone when he was called to a home in the 6500 block of 117th Avenue NE north of Lake Stevens.
The woman in her 30s had faint breathing and appeared to be turning blue when the deputy arrived around 3:50 a.m. Friday, sheriff’s office spokeswoman Shari Ireton said. Minutes after getting the spray, the woman was conscious and her breathing was restored.
Navarro learned how to give naloxone April 27. He was among dozens of law enforcement officers across the county to get training in the use of the prescription medication, better known as Narcan. It also can be given by injection, but police won’t be working with needles.
The idea is to save lives.
“I really think by year’s end the tally will be substantial,” said Dr. Adam Kartman, who trained local police. “I’m delighted that the law enforcement authorities in Snohomish County have stepped forward and volunteered to take this on.”
Fire departments have been using Narcan for years.
In 2014, paramedics with the Everett Fire Department used Narcan on 153 patients, all by needle.
It is effective, said Timothy Key, chief of the department’s emergency medical services division.
The vast majority of cases involved patients with significant breathing problems as a result of drug overdose.
“Their respiratory rate was not enough to sustain keeping them alive,” Key said. “In all those cases the Narcan administration reversed the effects of the opiate.”
Narcan is used on people who have overdosed on heroin or painkiller opiates, such as morphine, oxycodone or Vicodin. It blocks the effects of opioid overdose, which includes shallow breathing. If administered in time, it can reverse overdose symptoms within a couple of minutes. Each kit costs about $40.
The training of police officers comes at a time when overdose deaths from heroin and opiates have been on the rise in Snohomish County and elsewhere in Washington. In 2013 alone, heroin and prescription opioid overdoses represented two-thirds of the 130 accidental overdose deaths in the county, according to the Snohomish Health District.
Kartman and Key believe the use of Narcan by law enforcement officers will be particularly helpful in rural areas where police often reach patients before volunteer fire departments.
In Everett, police officers recently were trained to give the nasal spray. The fire department plans similar training for its emergency medical technicians.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446; stevick@heraldnet.com.
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