Los Angeles Darvocet and Darvon Injury Attorneys

Darvocet, also known as Darvon, and distributed under a variety of brands, has been declared a dangerous medicine because of the high risk for accidental or intentional overdose.

The once-popular prescription painkiller was finally banned by the FDA in 2010 after it was proven to cause abnormal or fatal heart rhythm abnormalities in healthy people.

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For a free initial consultation regarding Darvocet or Darvon injuries, contact The Los Angeles Auto Accident Attorneys today.

Fatal Overdose

The medicine containing propoxyphene was first banned in England because of government concerns about people dying from relatively low-level overdoses and its increasingly frequent use in suicides. Several groups had been petitioning the FDA for years to ban Darvon and Darvocet in the U.S., citing similar concerns about the dangerous potential of the drug in terms of toxicity and potential for addiction.

Manufacturer Eli Lilly and Company had promoted the drug as a safe, non-addictive substitute for codeine, but propoxyphene figured into 6,449 emergency room admissions in the U.S. in 1996, and was cited by medical examiners as the twelfth-leading cause of drug fatalities for the previous year.

Studies of the popular British form of the drug, Co-proxamol, showed that patients could possibly overdose and die by exceeding their dosage by as little as two doses. Many deaths have been associated with this propoxyphene formulation, either in accidental or intentional overdoses. Another study indicated that the medication was a contributing factor, if not the causative factor, in 18 percent of all drug-related deaths and five percent of all suicides prior to its withdrawal in England.

The group that petitioned the FDA in 1978 and 2006 to ban Darvocet and Darvon, Public Citizen, claimed that the FDA’s delay in banning the drug in the U.S. following its ban in England six years prior resulted in the deaths of 1,000 to 2,000 more people.

If you or a loved one accidentally overdosed, attempted suicide, or experienced heart problems while using Darvon or Darvocet, please contact the Denver personal injury lawyers at The Los Angeles Auto Accident Attorneys.