Prescription drug overdoses, a dangerous side effect of the nation’s embrace of narcotic painkillers, are a “substantial” burden on hospitals and the economy, according to a new study of emergency room visits.

Overdoses involving prescription painkillers have become a leading cause of injury deaths in the U.S. and a closely watched barometer of an evolving health care crisis. Little was known, however, about the nature of overdoses treated in the nation’s emergency rooms.

A new analysis of 2010 data from hospitals nationwide found that prescription painkillers, known as opioids, were involved in 68 percent of overdoses treated in emergency rooms. Hospital care for those overdose victims cost an estimated $1.4 billion.

The estimated 92,200 hospital visits were more than five times the number of deaths involving opioid painkillers that year.

In a report published online Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers from Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University and Rush Medical College analyzed data from the Nationwide Emergency Department Sample and adjusted the raw figures to generate national estimates.

Researchers found that fewer than 2 percent of the overdoses treated in emergency rooms were fatal. But in more than half the cases, victims had to be admitted to the hospital.

“Further efforts to stem the prescription opioid overdose epidemic are urgently needed,” the researchers concluded.

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