Sunday, August 31, 2014

New Life Saving Treatments in Opioid Overdose

  There are 19,500 deaths annually due to overdoses of prescription pain meds or heroin....every 27 minutes...think Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Winehouse, Jim Belushi, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin,etc,etc,etc. These deaths may have been prevented with a timely dose of a rapid-acting opioid antagonist naloxone.
  Only available to patients on prescription narcotics at risk is Evizio Auto-injector, the newly approved device that when placed against the skin injects naloxone intra-muscularly...a recorded voice coaches treating bystanders !
  Option 2 for illicit-opioid abusers...Naloxone Nasal Rescue Kit. BTW NYC has distributed 25,000 doses since 2010...but these kits require training for successful administration. Reckitt Benckiser recently licensed an intranasal naloxone device and is fast-tracking the spray to market.
WIRED mag August 2014 p.040 by Emily Dreyfuss

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