Medications at High Risk for Diversion and Abuse In Correctional Facilities

The practice of Correctional Medicine has many strange differences from medicine outside the walls. It took me a couple of years to get comfortable with the various aspects of providing medical care to incarcerated inmates. Of all of these differences, one that stands out in importance is the fact that many seemingly benign medications are abused in correctional settings.

Of course, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has established a list of drugs known to have potential for abuse and even addiction. The DEA even ranks these drugs according to the severity of this risk. Schedule I drugs carry the most risk, followed by Schedule II, and so on, all the way down to Schedule V, which are thought to have the least risk.

However, the drugs that we are talking about here are not on the DEA’s list. These are medications that are not abused (or, at least, not thought to be abused) in mainstream medical settings. But these drugs are, in fact, abused and diverted in jails and prisons.

The reasons for this are somewhat complex, but in my mind, it boils down to this: These are drugs that have psychoactive effects that mimic, to some degree, the effects of the drugs on the DEA Schedules. If you are addicted, or even if you just like to get high once in a while, and you can’t obtain your preferred drugs of abuse because you are incarcerated, these are the drugs that can serve as an alternative in a pinch.

It is critically important for medical professionals in corrections to know which seemingly benign drugs have the potential to be abused and diverted. Even if a particular inmate doesn’t care about getting high himself, he can still profit by selling these drugs to others who are. Vulnerable inmates can be (and are) bullied into obtaining these drugs for distribution–if we make them available. Continue reading

Beware of “Friendly Prescribing!”

doctor-with-prescription-padImagine that you are a healthcare provider in a jail medical clinic. One of the jail nurses comes to you and says “Will you call me in a prescription for my hypertension meds? I have no more refills and my doctor charges $100.00 for a visit just to get more!” Or perhaps it is a detention deputy who asks, “Can I get a few Ambien from you? This shift work kills me and I need them occasionally.” Or “Can I get some Augmentin? I have Bronchitis.”

Continue reading

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

Get Updated Information Here…

We have added an ‘event’ on our Facebook page for the Essentials of Correctional Medicine Conference.  Make sure to jump over there and join the event for all of the latest information regarding the conference next month. Continue reading

Don’t Get Burned by Serotonin Syndrome (like I did)

A 46 year old man comes to the medical clinic complaining of muscle aches and twitching, which he first noticed two days ago.  He had been booked two weeks ago and his prescribed outside medications were continued:  sertraline 100mg a day, amitriptyline 100mg at bedtime and lisinopril.

He walks into clinic with a stiff legged gait. His vital signs show a heart rate of 124.   He has sweat on his forehead and a noticeable tremor of the hands.  His speech is pressured.

So what is going on with this patient?  The answer, as you may have guessed from the title, is Serotonin Syndrome.  If you tap on his knees, he will have exaggerated reflexes.  Fortunately, he has only a mild case.

Serotonin Syndrome is a constellation of symptoms caused by an excess of the neurotransmitter serotonin. It ranges in severity from mild cases (like the one above) to fatal.  In my opinion, all medical personnel in correctional facilities should be aware of Serotonin Syndrome.  It is not as uncommon as you might have been taught; if you look carefully for it, you will find cases.

Serotonin Syndrome Defined

Serotonin Syndrome is characterized by a trinity of abnormalities:

  1. Neuromuscular hyperactivity:  Muscle twitching, tremor, hyperreflexia.
  2. Autonomic effects:  tachycardia, hypertension, hyperthermia, sweating, shivering.
  3. Mental status effects:  anxiety, agitation, hypomania, confusion, hallucinations.

Mild cases of Serotonin Syndrome may only manifest as tremor, hyperreflexia, tachycardia and sweating and shivering.

Moderately severe patients will additionally have an increased temperature, clonus and agitation.

Severe cases are usually confused and hallucinating, and have very high temperatures (sometimes over 106F) which can lead to all sorts of very bad effects, like rhabdomyolysis, seizures, renal failure, and, yes, death.

Treatment of Serotonin Syndrome

The most important treatment of Serotonin Syndrome is to immediately stop all of the serotonergic drugs the patient is taking!  Benzodiazepines are helpful in treating the agitation and neuromuscular effects of moderate cases.  Severe cases, of course, need to go to the ER for big time supportive care and treatment.

Causes of Serotonin Syndrome

So what causes Serotonin Syndrome?  The answer is that Serotonin Syndrome is caused by drugs that act by increasing serotonin levels. These are mostly psychiatric drugs, of course.  The Big Three Categories of serotonergic drugs are:

  1. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs).  There are lots of these.  I won’t list them; you know what they are.
  2. Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs), which act by blocking serotonin reuptake as well as norepinephrine reuptake.  The ones I see used most are amitriptyline, imipramine and doxepin.
  3. Serotonin-norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors (SNRIs).  This group includes Trazodone Venlafaxine and desvenlafaxine (Effexor and Pristiq), and duloxetine (Cymbalta).

You should memorize that list!  However, many other drugs increase serotonin levels besides those in The Big Three Categories.  Interesting examples include amphetamines, Buspirone, Tramadol and tryptans.

There are two main ways that the drugs in the Big Three Categories can cause Serotonin Syndrome.  One way is just to use large doses of a serotonergic agent, usually an SSRI.  Big dosing of SSRIs was done in the past more than it is now.  My psychiatrist mentor here in Boise, Dr. Estess, told me that when Prozac was first introduced and doctors were experimenting with big doses, like 80mg a day, he used to see lots of mild-moderate cases of Serotonin Syndrome.  It is less common to see large doses of SSRIs used nowadays, since it has been pretty well established that you get little, if any, additional anti-depressant benefit from SSRIs by using big doses.  But still, occasionally, someone will arrive at one of my jails taking, say, 200mg a day of sertraline.  If you see a patient like that, check their reflexes and look carefully for a tremor and you may indeed find evidence of systemic serotonin effect.

However, the more important cause of Serotonin Syndrome, by far, is by combining agents from two different categories.  This practice is very common; I see this all the time. For example an SSRI is prescribed along with Trazodone as a sleeper or an SSRI is combined with a tri-cyclic antidepressant like amitriptyline on the dubious premise that two anti-depressants are better than one.  However, try this:  plug an SSRI and a TCA or trazodone into a drug interaction checker (like this one that I like to use)A big red stop sign will pop up saying (approximately) “Major potential drug interaction!  Risk of Serotonin Syndrome! Do you really want to do this?”  And the risk here is real.

Serotonin Syndrome Develops Quickly

One thing that I did not mention yet about full-blown Serotonin Syndrome is that it tends to develop quickly.  I personally learned this the hard way.  I had a patient in one of my jails die from Serotonin Syndrome.  Dead.  The patient was a middle-aged man who came to the jail taking Paxil and Imipramine prescribed by his outside psychiatrist.  I continued these medications.  A couple of months into his incarceration, in the middle of the night, he developed agitation, hallucinations and vomiting.  He became unresponsive.  An ambulance was called.  At the ER, he had a temp of 107F, intense muscle rigidity, and full blown shock.  He died there in the ER.

Benefits?  Risk!

This tragic case occurred early in my correctional medicine career.  It has made me vigilant in looking for evidence of Serotonin Syndrome—and I have found a few mild-moderate cases since.  It also made me question whether the benefit of combining two serotonergic agents in one patient ever outweighs the risk.  I personally don’t believe so.

Whether you agree or disagree with this conclusion, please remember the danger of Serotonin Syndrome when you combine serotonergic agents.  You may have used this combination a hundred times and have never seen ill effects.  That does not mean you never will.  Consider whether the benefit of the drug combination you are considering truly outweigh the risk of Serotonin Syndrome.

Have you had a case of Serotonin Syndrome in your facility?

What is your opinion of combining serotonergic drugs?

 

Review Articles of the Month–Emphasis Psychiatry

Like most physicians, I subscribe to several medical education and CME sites.  One of my favorites is Primary Care Medical Abstracts.  PCMA chooses 30 papers a month of interest to primary care physicians and then these papers are reviewed by two physicians (usually Rick Bukata and Jerry Hoffman).  The reviews are insightful and funny and pretty fun to listen to.  These guys have no problem calling B.S. when they review certain papers.  I like that!  (By the way, I have no affiliation with PCMA). Continue reading

Embracing the Placebo Effect of Antidepressants.

Social Worker Shanna at work in the Ada County Jail Boise, Idaho

I recently ran across this interesting article (found here) which is the latest in a long series over the years comparing antidepressant efficacy to placebos.  I know that this is a controversial subject with some believing that all (or most) of antidepressant effect is placebo effect and others believing that antidepressants do indeed work better than placebos, especially among the most severely depressed patients.  The researchers in this article did a review of several trials and concluded that antidepressants work better than placebo in those with mild and moderate depression.  The most interesting statistic from this paper in my mind is this:  in this, the most positive analysis that I have read  on the effect of antidepressants, the “Number Needed to Treat” (NNT) to have one patient do better than by placebo alone was five (5).  In other words, 4 out of 5 patients in this study got no benefit from the antidepressant over placebo. Continue reading