Difficult intravenous (IV) access may be a concern encountered by anaesthesiologists in everyday practice. Peripheral venous catheter placement may be difficult, especially at the extremes of age or if the patient is obese, dark skinned, an IV drug abuser, hypotensive [1]. Currently the methods such as ultrasound, laser rod and local hot compress are adopted to deal with the difficulties but th...

BACKGROUND Unsafe injection practices are prevalent among injection drug users (IDU) and have resulted in numerous forms of drug-related harm including HIV/HCV transmission and other bacterial and viral infections. North America's first supervised injection facility (SIF) was established in Vancouver in order to address injection-related harms among IDU. This study sought to examine injection d...

Cocaine and its alkaloid free base "crack-cocaine" have long since been substances of abuse. Drug abuse of cocaine via oral, inhalation, intravenous, and intranasal intake has famously been associated with a number of medical complications. Intestinal ischemia and perforation remain the most common manifestations of cocaine associated gastrointestinal disease and have historically been associat...

The acute coronary syndrome due to the left main coronary artery (LMCA) thrombosis is a clinically rare and catastrophic event. We describe a young man (smoker, alcoholic, and drug abuser) with a history of recent surgery and typical chest pain who had non-occlusive LMCA thrombosis in coronary angiography. The thrombosis was successfully treated with two 180 µ/kg intracoronary boluses of eptifi...

BACKGROUND Right-sided endocarditis occurs predominantly in intravenous drug users, in patients with pacemaker or central venous lines and in patients with congenital heart disease. The vast majority of cases involve the tricuspid valve. Eustachian valve endocarditis is an uncommon disease with similar signs and symptoms of the tricuspid valve endocarditis. A series of only 16 cases of eustachi...

Evidence accumulating from clinical observations, neuroimaging and neuropathological studies suggests that illicit drug abuse accentuates the adverse effects of HIV on the central nervous system (CNS). Experimental investigation in cell culture models supports this conclusion. Injecting drug abuse is also a risk factor for the acquisition of HIV infection, the incidence of which continues to ri...

Article type: Case report Recently, there have been more reports of cardiac valve infections due to the increasing number of intravenous (IV) drug abusers and chronic renal failure patients. Among cardiac valves, tricuspid valve is most commonly affected in the course of endocarditis. Appropriate management of these patients is a challenging and controversial issue in the field of cardiac surge...