Performance of Fentanyl Immunoassays in an ED Patient Population

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid fueling the current opioid crisis in the United States. While emergency department (ED) visits due to opioid-related overdoses, injection complications, and withdrawals become increasingly more frequent, fentanyl is not detected in routine toxicology testing. We evaluated 2 FDA-approved fentanyl immunoassays in a sampled ED population.

De-identified, remnant urine specimens (n = 213) collected from patients presenting to a large ED were analyzed using ARK Fentanyl II (ARK II) and Immunalysis SEFRIA (SEFRIA) fentanyl immunoassays on an Architect c16000 (Abbott) analyzer. All discrepant specimens were evaluated by LC-MS/MS. Additionally, polysubstance abuse patterns and trends were analyzed.

While intra-assay imprecision was comparable for ARK II and SEFRIA, inter-assay imprecision for ARK II and SEFRIA varied from 8.0% to 1.8% and from 37% to 12.5%, respectively. SEFRIA had a marginally higher false-positivity rate (3%) than ARK II (1%). Both assays had equivalent sensitivity of 95%, with ARK II (99%) having greater specificity than SEFRIA (97%). Fentanyl was detected in 13.7% of drug-panel-positive patient samples and most frequently observed in patients also testing positive for amphetamines and cocaine. Notably, fentanyl was detected in 5.3% of patient samples that were negative for all other drugs in our standard toxicology panel.

A sizable portion of drug-positive samples from our ED were positive for fentanyl, with a subset of patients testing positive for fentanyl alone. Implementation of fentanyl testing into routine toxicology panels can elucidate polysubstance abuse paradigms and capture ED patients that would go undetected in standard panels.