The share of patients with opioid use disorder who needed dexmedetomidine, an intensive care sedative, to control withdrawal rose from about 6% to about 20% at two Philadelphia hospitals after dexmedetomidine entered the local fentanyl supply, according to a Penn Medicine study in JAMA Internal Medicine. In the final three months studied, ending in September 2025, the figure reached about 32%.
The findings put hospital-level numbers on what Philadelphia doctors have described for more than a year. Withdrawal from fentanyl mixed with medetomidine can drive heart rate and blood pressure to dangerous levels, and a growing share of patients need ICU-level care just to get through it.
