US musician Tom Petty died of an accidental overdose after taking various painkillers, according to a statement issued by his family.<\/p>\n
Petty “suffered from many serious ailments…most significantly a fractured hip”, the statement said.<\/p>\n
Family members say they believe he was overusing prescription pain medication when he died in October aged 66.<\/p>\n
Petty found fame as the lead singer of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, with hits like American Girl and Breakdown.<\/p>\n
He was also a co-founder of the Traveling Wilburys group in the late 1980s, recording albums with Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Jeff Lynne and George Harrison.<\/p>\n
Petty was found unconscious, not breathing and in full cardiac arrest at his Malibu home on 2 October.<\/p>\n
He was taken to hospital, but could not be revived and died later that evening.<\/p>\n
Petty’s family met with a medical examiner on Friday morning and updated his fans on Facebook.<\/p>\n
“On the day he died he was informed his hip had graduated to a full on break and it is our feeling that the pain was simply unbearable and was the cause for his over use of medication”, the statement said.<\/p>\n
“We knew before the report was shared with us that he was prescribed various pain medications for a multitude of issues including Fentanyl patches and we feel confident that this was, as the coroner found, an unfortunate accident.”<\/p>\n
They added that his death “may spark a further discussion on the opioid crisis and we feel that is a necessary and healthy discussion”.<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles coroner’s office attributed his death to “multisystem organ failure” due to a “mixed toxicity” of seven medications. They are fentanyl, oxycodone, emazepam, alprazolam, citalopram, acetyl fentanyl, and despropionyl fentanyl.<\/p>\n
Years of over-prescription of opioid painkillers in the US has created a nationwide addiction crisis, with patients turning to heroin and other street drugs when their prescriptions stop.<\/p>\n
In 2016, opioid-related overdoses increased by 28%, killing 42,249 people.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US musician Tom Petty died of an accidental overdose after taking various painkillers, according to a statement issued by his family. Petty “suffered from many serious ailments…most significantly a fractured hip”, the statement said. Family members say they believe he was overusing prescription pain medication when he died in October aged 66. Petty found fame […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":393805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[137],"tags":[16341,289],"yoast_head":"\n