Reader Questions Benzo Withdrawal and Inhaler Abuse

(With regard for The Rules for Treating Benzodiazepine Withdrawal) I practice in a jail on the East Coast. I totally agree that Benzo’s must be used, but I can’t find anything in the literature concerning length of treatment to avoid life-threatening vs. annoying symptoms. The months-long tapers are not well accepted by either Correctional Healthcare companies or Correctional institutions. Most providers here go with a week of tapering diazepam. I usually go with 10-14 days. I would like to try your general formula of choosing the dose of diazepam, then tapering down every 4-6 days. Do you have any literature or expert panel opinion on how long to taper in order to avoid life-threatening consequences? Do you see any benefit to using other meds after the benzo taper simply to decrease annoying symptoms from withdrawal?  Steven Wilbraham MD

Thanks for the question, Dr. Wilbraham!  Yes, the psychiatry literature talks about tapering benzodiazepines very gradually over many months or even years. But what they are doing is different than what we are doing.  They are treating benzodiazepine addiction and we are treating withdrawal with a detoxification protocol.  It is analogous to the difference between treating opiate addiction in a methadone clinic (which also can last for months or years) versus what we do when we treat opiate withdrawal for at most a couple of weeks. 

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Using a Wrench Instead of a Hammer for Alcohol Withdrawal

I am seeing a 52-year-old male in my jail medical clinic who was booked yesterday on a felony DUI charge.  He says he drinks “a lot of beer” but denies having a drinking problem.  He is cranky and not really cooperative.  He does not want to be here.  However, the deputies tell me that he did not sleep much last night and did not eat breakfast.  I note that he has a mild hand tremor and a heart rate of 108.  According to the clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment for Alcohol–revised version (the most common tool used in the United States to assess the severity of alcohol withdrawal since 1989) my patient needs no treatment for alcohol withdrawal.  But this is wrong!  In actuality, my patient is experiencing moderate withdrawal and should be treated immediately and aggressively. 

 Using CIWA is like using a wrench to pound in a nail.  It can be done, but it is not really efficient or accurate.  A different tool (a hammer) could drive the nail much more quickly and effectively. CIWA is simply not the right tool to assess alcohol withdrawal.  We should be using something better.

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MAT in Jails. Response to Reader Questions

My last post about MAT in jails generated a lot of excellent responses–so many, in fact, that I realized that my discussion of MAT in jails was incomplete. I would like to enlarge the discussion about the proper role of MAT in jails by responding to these comments. Before I do, I want to make sure that we are all looking at the issue from the same perspective. Please consider how MAT should be used in three different jails.

What’s the role of MAT in a small jail?
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Opioid Withdrawal Not Deadly? Wrong!

One thing I always tell practitioners who are beginning a jail medical practice: you’re going to see a lot of withdrawal cases — study up! In particular, since the opioid epidemic hit, the number of patients I’ve seen in my jails withdrawing from heroin and other opioids of all stripes has skyrocketed. I’ve seen enough patients withdrawing from opioids that I think I am reasonably knowledgeable on the topic. Because of this, I was quite surprised when I ran across this sentence in a recent edition of The Medical Letter:

“Opioid withdrawal is not life-threatening.” — The Medical Letter

The problem is that although this sentence seems quite self-assured, it is flat out wrong. In fact, it is not just wrong; it is also dangerous. People do die from opioid withdrawal. I know of several such cases from my work with jails. Opioid withdrawal needs to be recognized as a potentially life-threatening condition, just like alcohol withdrawal and benzodiazepine withdrawal. Continue reading

Treating Heroin Withdrawal: Methadone, Suboxone and . . . Tramadol?

In my last JailMedicine post, I wrote that clonidine is an excellent drug for the treatment of opioid withdrawal. In response, several people have asked about methadone and Suboxone. Why not use one of those drugs instead of clonidine?

The short answer is that both methadone and Suboxone are excellent drugs for the treatment of withdrawal. However, both are much more complicated to use in jails due to DEA legal requirements and a much larger potential for diversion and abuse. If you are using Suboxone or methadone, great! I believe that clonidine is a better choice for most jails. Those interested in using methadone or Suboxone need to be fully aware of the DEA laws surrounding their use. Before you use one of these drugs, you must make sure that you are following the law. I know of two physicians in my hometown who were disciplined by the DEA for prescribing narcotics to treat addiction without registering. The DEA are not kidders!

By the way, Jail practitioners should also be aware that Tramadol has been used successfully to treat withdrawal, as well. Continue reading

Effective Treatment of Heroin Withdrawal in Corrections

Imagine this: You’re practicing medicine and a patient comes to you with an illness. You make the diagnosis and then say to the patient, “I can see that you are very sick. And there is a highly effective treatment for your condition that would make you feel a lot better. It’s simple and it isn’t even expensive. But, you know what? I’m not going to give it to you! You’re not sick enough. Come back tomorrow. If you’re sicker tomorrow—well, if you’re sick enough—I will treat you then. But not right now.”

Crazy, right? We’d never do such a thing.

But . . . the problem is, we frequently do that exact thing with our heroin withdrawal patients. I’m not singling out correctional medicine practitioners here. I think that, in general, heroin withdrawal is treated better in correctional settings than it is in the community. Nevertheless, it is a fact that heroin withdrawal is often not properly treated in jails and prisons. I have seen it.

I believe that there are four main reasons that some facilities do not appropriately treat heroin (and other opioid) withdrawal. Continue reading

What Makes a Good Medical Scoring System?

20050629My good friend Al Cichon wrote the following comments to me about my article on the 10 Point Pain Scale.

Use of a ‘scale’ to measure subjective factors is a true oxymoron (heavy on the moron part). The ‘fifth vital sign’ is a misdirected effort to solve a true quality care problem – in my opinion. Vital Signs are objective (as in measurable) indicators that have been demonstrated to provide consistently valid data for patient care.

JCAHO has imposed the ‘Pain Scale’ in an effort to assure that the assessment of pain will be factored into patient care. Unfortunately, it is a bureaucratic response to a clinical situation – if it can be made to be measurable (regardless of practical validity) it can be enforced. My apologies to proponents and defenders – but no matter how well intended; it is still dysfunctional.

Yet, we are obliged to employ some process of assessment to determine the impact of subjective symptoms in an efficient / effective manner. The many schemes (Pain 1-10; Cardiac pain 1-5; etc.) developed have achieved relative success / adoption / adaptation. It does seem that these processes have provided some benefit – yet they all suffer from the same susceptibility – subjectivity. Whether you are working in corrections (where any subjective report must be verified) or the community (where verification is not always considered) any of these schemes has the same risk – because there is no objective validation.

One possible option to stabilize the use of any such scale is some method of anchoring the initial or end point of the scale. That would then provide a somewhat stable reference for guiding care and transmitting information (about the patient) to other providers. Also, this mechanism can be employed in other subjective areas.

Begin with asking the patient – ‘What is the worst pain you have ever experienced?’ (the response is usually associated with fractures, renal calculi, child-birth, etc.) Now, lets’ label that as a 10 (or 5) and now –‘What is the discomfort you have now in comparison to that prior event?’ Then document the exchange in the record: Worst Pain: fractured wrist – 10); Current Pain: pulled muscle – 7. Now, no matter the number system you have an ‘anchor’ to both the scale and the present condition that can be related to the care process and others. It is important to document the ‘source’ of pain too – as this may be quite useful if you are explaining the case later (DOC, court, etc.)

One variant of this is: If you had a ‘bucket labeled depression and a stick marked off from 0 to 10 what is the worst you’ve ever felt and when”? The response will then provide an anchor (9 when I was admitted to the hospital after trying to kill myself). Additional questions are: How deep is that bucket now? Has it ever been at 0? If I could make it happen (wave magic wand) and get you released and home now – what would it be? (interestingly it can go up with release for many reasons)

When you ‘anchor’ the ‘pain scale’ it establishes the assessment in a relatable setting and can be quite helpful in guiding patient care. The ‘anchor’ can also be quite useful in discerning the ‘historical validity’ of the case as well – ‘Doc when I had that car accident with multiple fractures it was a 10; now my sprained (non-swollen, non-bruised) ankle is a 10 too!’

Clinical judgment is always the most important skill in any patient care situation. The data subjective & objective is helpful but must be understood / applied in the clinical context.

Also confounding the assessment is the different types of acute / chronic discomfort (myofascial, neuropathic, visceral). As important as assessing the level of pain is the type – physiologic source – since it is critical in guiding treatment.

As noted – ‘chronic pain’ is better measures by an assessment of the patients ADL (what daily activities are disrupted and is that new). If a patient can function (nutrition, hygiene, elimination) and participate in some activities then treatment of the physiologic cause is the most important clinical consideration.

Thanks, Al!  Excellent comments.  Let’s summarize:

  1. The 10-Point Pain Scale is not the only scoring system in medicine for subjective complaints. There is the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, for example.  Also, the Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment for Alcohol (CIWA-Ar) for alcohol withdrawal.   There are scoring systems to rate abdominal pain and chest pain and the likelihood of pulmonary embolism.  I could go on and on.  All of these systems have the same limitations and liabilities, though some do a better job than others.
  2. Just because you assign a number to a complaint, that does not make it objective.  Because each of these scoring systems assigns a number to the complaint, there is a tendency to think of them as objective rather than subjective.  But as Al points out, this is not the case.  There is no real difference between someone who says his pain is “a six” and someone who says that he has “moderate pain.”
  3. In order for a subjective scoring system to work, it needs to be “anchored” in some way.  Al anchors the 10-Point Pain scale on the patient’s own worst experience.  Another commonly used clinical pain scale, the Visual Analogue Pain Scale, anchors the scale onto facial expressions.  The more “anchored” a system is, the better it is.  The less anchored it is, the less useful it will be.Unknown
  4. The more numbers in the scoring system, the less reliable it becomes.  Let’s say instead of a 10-Point Pain Score, we used a 1000-point pain score and were asking patients “would you say your pain is a 671 or a 672?”  Of course, a pain score of “672” gives us no more useful information than a “6.”  In fact, it gives us less useful information because it is more confusing.  In a scientific sense, the more numbers a subjective rating system has, the less “inter-rater reliability” that system has. The simplest subjective scale has only two scores, “None (zero)” and “Some (one),” as in “Do you have pain or not?”  The subjective scale perhaps used most often in daily life (Like when you go to a Thai restaurant and are asked how hot you want your food to be) is a four score scale:  None, Mild, Medium, Severe.  The Visual Analogue score is a 6 point scale.  CIWA-Ar uses 8 points.  And the 10-Point JCAHO Pain Scale uses 11 points (zero plus one through ten). Is the 10-Point JCAHO scale more accurate than a simple “mild-moderate-severe” system?  Probably not. In fact, no “probably” about it.  No.
  5. Subjective scoring systems work better at evaluating changes over time than the initial severity of a symptom.  If a patient says his pain is a “6,” I may not know exactly how that is different from a “7” or even a “4.”  But later, when the same patient now rates his pain as a “5,” I am pretty confident that his pain has decreased, at least by a little.
  6. Subjective scoring systems only work if the patient understands and is cooperative with the process.  Al helps the patient to understand the process with his excellent “anchoring” technique (which I will be adopting, by the way).  But the system still will not work if the patient always, no matter what, says “my pain is a 10.”   That is the main problem I run into in my jails; deciding when patients are exaggerating their symptoms.  For example, if a patient complains of “severe” constipation, what weight do I give to their use of the word “severe?”
  7. There are two types of subjectivity in scoring, the patient’s and ours.  The patient is subjective when rating her own pain or depression or whatever.  Then we clinicians make our own subjective assessments.  How sick does the patient look?  Often, the two assessments do not coincide, as when the patient rates his abdominal pain as a ten while munching on Cheetos and looking bored.  If I do not trust the patient’s own subjective assessment, sometimes I must substitute my own clinical judgment.
  8. Scoring systems for pain perform worse for chronic pain than for acute pain.  For chronic pain, a more useful assessment tool is to evaluate how the chronic pain affects Activities of Daily Living (ADLs).  Is the pain too debilitating to hold a job?  Play golf?  Go to the store?  Walk?  ADLs are usually much easier to assess in a correctional facility than in the outside world.  You can go down to housing and watch the patient.  How easily does the patient sit, stand, walk?  Does the patient go to recreation?  Sit for long periods of time playing cards or watching TV?  This sort of assessment is very useful for gauging the impact of chronic pain.

Any thoughts?  Please comment!

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Essential Pearls from Essentials

Essentials of Correctional Medicine was held last week in Salt Lake City, Utah and included some great talks.  Today’s post is a list of Pearls I gleaned from the conference speakers.

The definition of a “Pearl” is a bit of pithy and insightful information that can be communicated in one or two sentences. Hopefully, it is also something that you have not thought of yet and will change your practice for the better.

I ran into several Pearls at the Essentials conference. Here is a sampling (in no particular order): Continue reading

“Bath Salts,” A Review.

It used to be that “Bath Salts” were, well, salts that you would use in a bath.  Not anymore!  Nowadays, “Bath Salts” refers to a designer drug of abuse that is marketed like traditional bath salts to give legitimacy to the transaction.  They are also marketed as computer screen cleaners, jewelry cleaners and bug spray.  They are, of course, not intended to be used for any of these purposes; they contain synthetic designer drugs used to get high. Continue reading

Is It Possible to Withdraw From both Alcohol and Opiates at the Same Time?

Medicine in the Future.

I recently participated in a Webinar entitled “Managing Alcohol Withdrawal in the Correctional Setting.” During the question and answer section of the Webinar, a question was posed about how to manage the patient withdrawing from both alcohol and heroin at the same time.  I have been thinking about this question since.  In all my years of practice in correctional settings, I personally have never seen a patient who was simultaneously withdrawing from both alcohol and narcotics.  Is such a thing even possible?

After thinking about it, I have decided that this question this question has two answers:  a theoretical answer and a practical answer.  The theoretical answer first:

Theoretically, if a patient was truly suffering from both alcohol withdrawal and heroin withdrawal at the same time, our primary concern would be alcohol withdrawal rather than heroin withdrawal.  The reason for this is that patients die from alcohol withdrawal; it is a potentially lethal problem.  Heroin withdrawal, on the other hand, can be a serious medical problem, but does not tend to be lethal.  I was an emergency physician before I came to corrections, and this principle was drilled into us over and over–you deal with the life threatening concern first. Continue reading