We’ve got some tips for people who use drugs to access healthcare and advocate for yourself with healthcare providers – check out Quality Healthcare Is Your Right resource. In the iv drug use past hepatitis C treatment was largely ineffective and had serious side effects. Since 2013, there have been highly effective, all-oral, cures for hepatitis C.
Medical Complications of Injection Drug Use
The risks of overdosing greatly increase when drugs are injected directly into the bloodstream. As a result of the rapid action of the high and the severity of the effects, abusers also find it difficult to assess how much of the drug they are injecting into their bloodstream. Those who use intravenous drugs are at a higher risk of overdosing on a substance than those who usually take them in a manner other than by intravenous injection. Localized infections often manifest as abscesses, which are painful collections of pus under the skin, and cellulitis, a spreading bacterial infection of the skin and underlying tissues.
Infectious Diseases in Persons Who Inject Drugs
- Addiction to substances such as drugs can lead to dependency and eventually lead to drug dependency.
- As discussed in Chapter 2, prostitutes are at risk of acquiring HIV infection through both sexual and drug-use behaviors.
- Other human retroviruses, such as human T-cell lymphotropic virus, types I and II, are also transmitted among persons who inject drugs.
- Over a 10-year period, the number of IVDU-related upper extremity infections more than doubled, with more severe infections that underwent advanced imaging and intensive treatment.
- Naloxone, an opioid receptor antagonist, is a medication specifically designed to rapidly reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.
Reviews of HIV seroprevalence studies of IV drug users show persistent associations of seroprevalence rates with geography and ethnicity (CDC, 1987a; Des Jarlais and Friedman, 1987b; Curran, 1988; Hahn et al., 1988). In the United States, there are wide variations in HIV seroprevalence by region of the country. The second set of CDC estimates of the total number of IV drug users in the United States (CDC, 1987a) indicates that more than 1 million people inject illicit drugs. National estimates of this kind are developed by aggregating estimates of the number of IV https://www.inexoos.com/essential-tremor-and-how-to-manage-it/ drug users in each state.
Toward Reducing Risk-Associated Behavior Among IV Drug Users
GPs should be aware of the association between methadone and prolongation of the QT interval, which may be exacerbated by the co-prescribing of other medications for mental health illness. The crippling effects of early and repeated severe emotional trauma are often all too apparent. High levels of anxiety and poor motivation from depressive illness may contribute to failure to attend appointments. ‘Needle phobia’ may paradoxically aggravate the problem of venous access caused by physical damage to veins. This is understandable when one realises that most will have witnessed Oxford House an overdose in others, and which is the rationale for providing naloxone injection kits. HEPATITIS C (formerly known as “non-A, non-B“ hepatitis and also referred to as “HCV“) is spread through blood-to-blood contact and is very infectious, which means you can acquire it quite easily if exposed to it.