Americans Fighting the Opioid Crisis in Their Own Backyards
Credit: New York Times article, Jan. 19, 2016.
The United States is in the midst of an opioid overdose epidemic. The rates of opioid addiction, babies born addicted to opioids, and overdoses have skyrocketed in the past decade. No population has been hit harder than rural communities. Many of these communities are in states with historically low levels of funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIGMS’ Institutional Development Award (IDeA) program builds research capacities in these states by supporting basic, clinical, and translational research, as well as faculty development and infrastructure improveme...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - August 1, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Chris Palmer Tags: Pharmacology Medicines Opioids Pain Source Type: blogs
LITFL Review 341
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
Welcome to the 341st LITFL Review! Your regular and reliable source for the highest highlights, sneakiest sneak peeks and loudest shout-outs from the webbed world of emergency medicine and critical care. Each week the LITFL team casts the spotlight on the blogosphere’s best and brightest and deliver a bite-sized chunk of FOAM.
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The Most Fair Dinkum Ripper Beauts of the Week
PARAMEDIC-2 epi...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - July 22, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Marjorie Lazoff, MD Tags: LITFL review LITFL R/V Source Type: blogs
It's over
He passed away Monday evening.Because he was on hospice care, I kept a log in their manual. I'll post what I wrote:7/169:55 am I called hospice. No one had called or come out since Friday night when we registered with them. We had requested pain meds and anti-anxiety meds. And this morning, we need to refill his nitroglycerin tabsHe got up and walked down the hall without oxygen to the kitchen. I fixed him breakfast. We sat at the table and chatted. He went to the bathroom, changed his shirt, brushed his teeth, shaved, took his meds and put his contacts in. I thought, "wow! we'r...
Source: Wife of a Diabetic - July 18, 2018 Category: Endocrinology Source Type: blogs
It's over
He passed away Monday evening.Because he was on hospice care, I kept a log in their manual. I ' ll post what I wrote:7/169:55 am I called hospice. No one had called or come out since Friday night when we registered with them. We had requested pain meds and anti-anxiety meds. And this morning, we need to refill his nitroglycerin tabsHe got up and walked down the hall without oxygen to the kitchen. I fixed him breakfast. We sat at the table and chatted. He went to the bathroom, changed his shirt, brushed his teeth, shaved, took his meds and put his contacts in. I thought, " wow! w...
Source: Wife of a Diabetic - July 18, 2018 Category: Endocrinology Source Type: blogs
Do you have a Bagel Brain?
We can link grain consumption with causing or worsening some of the most mysterious brain disorders that have eluded the medical community for years, such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, depression, bipolar disorder, and, more recently, autism and ADHD.
Are you and your kids unknowingly under the influence of opiates? Opiates come disguised in many forms.
Grains contain opiates. Not figuratively, but quite literally. These opiates are not too different from morphine or heroin. Yes, wheat and grains, cleverly disguised as a multigrain loaf of bread to make sandwiches or a hot, steamy plate of macaroni and cheese for the ...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - July 12, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: News & Updates adhd bipolar disorder brain fog concentration Depression diy health Dr. Davis epilepsy grain-free headaches Inflammation mind mood swings OCD opiates schizophrenia undoctored wheat belly Wheat Belly Tot Source Type: blogs
It ’s time we think about health care differently
Before the invention of the stethoscope, doctors routinely laid their ears on chests of patients to check how they were doing. Homemade concoctions, essentially placebos, often made people feel better. Doctors visited homes of patients who would later pay them whatever they could afford. Local apothecaries sold morphine, a derivative of opium, to reduce pain. Medicine for its part was a nascent science – most of today’s diseases were yet to be discovered.
Fast forward to today, health care is a multi-trillion dollar industry. Medicine has branched into 120 recognized specialties and subspecialties, spinning out sev...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - July 9, 2018 Category: General Medicine Authors: < a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/post-author/praveen-suthrum" rel="tag" > Praveen Suthrum < /a > Tags: Policy Genetics Public Health & Source Type: blogs
Watch what happens when " pericarditis " and morphine cloud your judgment
Submitted and written by Alex Bracey with edits by Pendell Meyers and Steve SmithCaseA 50ish year old man with a history of CAD w/ prior LAD MI s/p LAD stenting presented to the ED with chest pain “similar to his prior MI, but worse.” The pain initially started the daypriorto presentation. The pain roused him from sleep but subsided without intervention. Around 19 hours later, he experienced the same pain, which prompted his presentation to the ED. By this time, three hours had passed from the onset of the pain but it was no longer present. Here is his initial ECG:00:04What do you think? - Sinus rhythm at ~70 bpmSTE in...
Source: Dr. Smith's ECG Blog - July 3, 2018 Category: Cardiology Authors: Pendell Source Type: blogs
The Almighty Hematoma Block for Wrist Fractures
This study found a "statistically significant difference during initial hours after fracture reduction and fixation so that pain intensity was less in elderly patients under hematoma block than patients who underwent general anesthesia in one and six hours after surgery." Most importantly, patients in the hematoma block group required less narcotic pain medication compared with the general surgery population.Experienced providers often know exactly where to inject anesthesia for hematoma blocks. Ultrasound-guided injection techniques, however, prove to be more accurate. Using ultrasound to identify the hematoma a...
Source: The Procedural Pause - July 2, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Blog Posts Source Type: blogs
Why Addicts Are Often Lonely People
Addiction is an incredibly lonely disease. However, we typically associate addicts with two extremes when it comes to sociability. On the one hand we imagine the stereotypical “life of the party” who abuses substances to become sociable, friendly, and functional, or we have the depressive addict who takes substances alone, substituting healthy interpersonal relationships for chemicals. The truth is that most addicts may fall somewhere along this spectrum, but they all experience extreme feelings of isolation.
As anyone who has suffered from addiction can vouch for, having a crippling reliance on substances can stem fr...
Source: World of Psychology - June 28, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Matthew Boyle Tags: Addiction Alcoholism Communication Family Friends Recovery Substance Abuse Treatment Loneliness self medicating Social Isolation Social Withdrawal Source Type: blogs
I Guess This Means The Federal Government Is Moving Forward With RTPM.
This popped up last week:Health to build national data exchange for prescription trackingBy Justin Hendry on Jun 21, 2018 6:54AM For real-time monitoring system.The Department of Health will establish a national data exchange for transferring prescription information between states and territories in real-time.The exchange is the first piece of work for the national prescription monitoring system, which was funded with $16.4 million last year to target the misuse of certain prescription drugs.The system will be used to instantly alert pharmacists and doctors if a patient has previously been supplied with prescription-only ...
Source: Australian Health Information Technology - June 26, 2018 Category: Information Technology Authors: Dr David G More MB PhD Source Type: blogs
Dr. Evil
Occasionally, medical professionals turn out to be serial killers. There have been a few cases of nurses who have had a hobby of murdering patients here in the U.S. Offhand I can think of a single physician who not only murdered several patients but who tried to feed his colleagues poison doughnuts, among other unpleasant acts. (Sorry, I can ' t remember his name and I don ' t feel like searching for it. I wrote about it here at the time, several years back.)In the UK,Harold Shipman was a small town GP who murdered as many as 250 patients. He killed himself in prison without ever explaining why he did it. They were mostly ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 21, 2018 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
What is diamorphine?
Diamorphine is another name for heroin.
(5a,6a)-7,8-didehydro-4,5-epoxy-17-methylmorphinan-3,6-diol diacetate.
Other synonyms diacetylmorphine, morphine diacetate, street names: H, smack, junk, horse, and brown.
Diamorphine is made by the chemical acetylation of morphine, which is derived from natural opium sources. The word morphine was coined by German apothecary Friedrich Sertürner around 1816 alluding to Morpheus Ovid’s name for the god of dreams (origin Greek “morphe” meaning form, shape, beauty. The word heroin was also coined in Germany, in 1898, as trademark for the morphine substitute invented ...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - June 20, 2018 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
A Tale of 2 FDAs
By ANISH KOKA
Frances Oldham Kelsey by all accounts was not mean to have a consequential life. She was born in Canada in 1914, at a time women were meant to be seen and not heard. Nonetheless, an affinity for science eventually lead to a masters in pharmacology from the prestigious McGill University. Her first real break came after she was accepted for PhD level work in the pharmacology lab of a professor at the University of Chicago. An esteemed professor was starting a pharmacology lab and needed assistants, and the man from Canada seemed to have a perfect resume to fit. That’s right, I said man. France...
Source: The Health Care Blog - June 4, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: anish_koka Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
