Infectious Complications and Mortality Due to Norgesic in Comparison with Other Injecting Narcotics

In addition to more severe complications and causing more dangerous diseases, the new narcotics like Norgesic, also cause much higher mortality. The use of these substances has shown an increase in 2005 in comparison to 2004 with higher mortality due to complications of injecting narcotics. Within 2 years, up to 690 hospitalizations occurred in the ward of infections diseases, which 104 cases had complications of injecting narcotics, comprising 15% of all hospitalizations. Mean age was 31.01. Study showed that 61.1% of patients were heroin addicts, 14.5% Norgesic, 6.1% Temgesic, 3.3% opium and 14.4% belonged to group of users of various substances. Users of Norgesic were clearly younger than heroin and opium groups. The most common complication in heroin users was abscess of injection site and in Norgesic users’ endocarditis (p<0.05). Four cases (10%) in 2004 and 9 cases (17%) in 2005 have died, also 17.9% of heroin group and 37.5% of Norgesic hospitalized cases. 70% of patients had fever on presentation. Tachycardia and tachypnea were seen in half of patients and most of patients had normal blood pressure. This cross-sectional study was performed on all hospitalized Patients in the ward of infectious diseases of Alzahra hospital in Isfahan, during years 2004-2005. Patients were divided into five groups including addicted to heroin, injecting opium, Norgesic, Temgesic and a group that did not use specifically a single narcotic. Symptoms on arrival, type of disease as well as type of discharge in the form of death, personal consent, running away or recovery were registered and analyzed. Narcotics cause immune suppression in the form of decline in the number of lymphocytes and immunoglobulin levels, which lead to the susceptibility to dangerous infections. In recent years injectable narcotics named Temgesic and Norgesic have found te be extensively used. Considering unknown complications of injecting new narcotics, this study has been planned in order to determine mortality rate and common infections in various narcotics.