Michael Jackson’s death and drugs involved

Recent news reports have said Michael Jackson was using a variety of opiate narcotics, including oxycontin, Demerol shots, and was sleeping using an intravenous Propofol drip, just like the patients do in the intensive care unit. Patients who are as wealthy as Jackson can easily find an unscrupulous physician to give them whatever they want, for a price.

The dangerous thing here is the use of the opiate narcotics, and the drug combinations, which lead to unpredictable consequences. The common end point is difficulty breathing, and stopped breathing. If Jackson were in an intensive care unit or under the immediate supervision of an anesthesiologist, alarms would go off when he stopped breathing and simple measures to start him breathing again would be undertaken.

While it’s possible that Jackson suffered a heart attack or had some other cause of death—and we will know for sure only after the autopsy—it’s unlikely. Physicians are trained to think first of the obvious things, and of course it’s obvious that Michael Jackson died of a drug overdose.

We use propofol (Diprovan) as the only medication for our procedures. Our sedation isn’t general anesthetic, it’s “sedation” or “twilight sleep”. We also dilute Propofol about ten to one in sterile salt water and use a special micro-dripper to be sure it isn’t used very quickly and the patient is safe. The typical general anesthetic, on the other hand, employs on average 10 drugs under the supervision of an anesthesiologist. These medications additionally require a sophisticated post-operative care unit including monitoring for hours in order to safely recover. And many times nausea, vomiting, and bad feelings result during hours to days after the general anesthesia procedure is over, when so many drugs are used. We hate to see Diprovan getting a bad name because it was associated with Michael Jackson. It’s a fantastic medication for our patients and very safe when used by itself in the manner we employ it. More information is available at DrYoho.com. See particularly http://www.dryoho.com/dr-yoho-book/chapter13-1.cfm. A medical journal article Dr. Yoho wrote about his technique is at http://www.dryoho.com/dr-yoho/anesthesia.cfm. We no longer use ketamine, incidentally, just Diprovan.