An
accidental overdose of the powerful painkiller fentanyl killed music
megastar Prince, a medical examiner’s report released Thursday reveals.
“The
decedent self-administered fentanyl,” A. Quinn Strobl, MD, chief
medical examiner for the Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office, noted in the
findings.
Fentanyl,
according to the National Institutes of Health, is a powerful synthetic
opiate analgesic similar to but more potent than morphine. The
prescription drug, often administered via injection, transdermal patch
or in lozenge form, is typically used to treat patients with severe
pain.
The one-page report gives no indication of how Prince obtained the drug.
“This
public data includes manner and cause of death,” the medical examiner’s
office wrote in a news release. “Under Minnesota Law, all other medical
examiner data is considered private or nonpublic.”
Nor does the report list any other contributing factors or “significant conditions.”
The
autopsy results follow weeks of speculation that the 57-year-old singer
was addicted to pain medications when he was found dead on April 21 at
his Paisley Park estate.
Prince’s
use of painkillers and how he obtained them have been the focus of a
criminal investigation. A judge sealed all records in the case, but no
charges are known to have been filed.
“The Carver County Sheriff’s Office continues its investigation,” the medical examiner’s office stated.
Prince Rogers Nelson was pronounced dead at 10:07 a.m. on April 21 — 19
minutes after emergency responders arrived and tried to resuscitate the
iconic artist. Investigators said he was last seen alive at about 8 p.m.
the night before at Paisley Park, a sprawling compound that doubled as
the reclusive singer’s recording studio and home in Chanhassen, Minn.
Prince’s estate manager, a personal assistant and Andrew Kornfeld, the son of a well-known addiction and pain management doctor, discovered the singer’s lifeless body in an elevator at about 9:40 a.m. and called 911.
When
Prince took the fatal dose of fentanyl is “unknown,” according to the
medical examiner’s release. The 5-foot-3 singer weighed 112 pounds and
was wearing a black cap, black shirt, gray undershirt and black pants at
the time of his death, according to the report. Prince had a scar on
his left hip and on the lower part of his right leg.
Though
the artist’s family and closest friends have not publicly addressed his
alleged addiction, news reports have indicated that Prince may have
started abusing medications following hip surgery several years ago due
to the pounding his body took from decades of lively stage performances.
A
week before his unexpected death, a private jet carrying Prince home
from a concert in Atlanta made an emergency landing in Illinois when the
singer reportedly suffered an opioid overdose and lost consciousness.
Paramedics who met the plane reportedly gave Prince a shot of the opioid antidote Narcan.
According to court documents
accidentally released in the case, Michael Todd Schulenberg, MD, a
Minneapolis-area family practitioner, treated Prince on April 7 and the
day before his death.
The
Minneapolis Star Tribune, citing an unidentified source, reports that
Schulenberg treated the singer for fatigue, anemia and concerns about
opiate withdrawal, but did not prescribe opioids.
The
sudden death of the entertainer has shed light on what the federal
government recently called a national epidemic of opioid-related
overdose deaths.
New guidelines
from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urge doctors
to avoid prescribing addictive opioid painkillers such as Oxycontin,
Percocet and Vicodin whenever possible for most patients with chronic
pain.
“More
than 40 Americans die each and every day from prescription opioid
overdoses,” CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, said in March. “Increased
prescribing of opioids — which has quadrupled since 1999 — is fueling an
epidemic that is blurring the lines between prescription opioids and
illicit opioids.”
A
Minneapolis criminal defense attorney has said Kornfeld was at the
singer’s home on a “lifesaving mission” to convince Prince to come to
California to start addiction treatment. Neither Kornfeld nor his
father, Howard Kornfeld, has been accused of wrongdoing.
William
Mauzy, the Kornfelds’ attorney, said Prince’s staff called the elder
Kornfeld on April 20 to seek help with the entertainer’s addiction to
painkillers. The doctor sent his son on a red-eye flight with a small
amount of Suboxone, a drug used to treat pain and reduce opioid cravings.
Prince, who would have turned 58 next week, was cremated.
(This story has been updated since it originally published.)
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