321 Prehospital Treatment of Intravenous Heroin Overdose

The Heroin Overdose Mystery

Heroin overdose deaths in the Unites States more than tripled from 2010 to 2014, reaching almost 11,000 per year. Despite the use of the term “overdose,” many of these victims died after self-administering an amount of opiate that would not be expected to be fatal for these drug-experienced, and drug-tolerant, individuals. Various explanations of this overdose mystery have been proposed. I desc...

Is subcutaneous or intramuscular naloxone as effective as intravenous naloxone in the treatment of life-threatening heroin overdose?

Clinical question " Is subcutaneous (SC) or intramuscular (IM) naloxone as effective as intravenous (IV) naloxone in the treatment of life-threatening heroin overdose? " An emergency department clinician was interested in comparing routes of administration of naloxone in light of anecdotal evidence suggesting that various routes may not be equally efficacious in restoring a patient to spontaneo...

Treatment of quetiapine overdose with intravenous lipid emulsion.

We report the case of a 29-year-old woman who attempted suicide by oral ingestion of potentially fatal doses of multiple drugs including quetiapine. Intravenous lipid emulsion (ILE) was administered at a dose higher than that used in the standard management of toxicity. Rapid improvement was observed in the patient's status, and no additional treatment was required during the period of observat...

Heroin Overdose: Prevalence, Correlates, Consequences and Interventions

Intranasal naloxone is a viable alternative to intravenous naloxone for prehospital narcotic overdose.

OBJECTIVE To compare the prehospital time intervals from patient contact and medication administration to clinical response for intranasal (IN) versus intravenous (IV) naloxone in patients with suspected narcotic overdose. METHODS This was a retrospective review of emergency medical services (EMS) and hospital records, before and after implementation of a protocol for administration of intran...