Reduced Emergency Department Visits and Hospitalisation with Use of an Unsanctioned Safe Consumption Site for Injection Drug Use in the United States.
J Gen Intern Med
; 37(15): 3853-3860, 2022 11.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-35020166
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Safe consumption sites (SCS) are an evidence-based intervention to prevent drug use-related harm. In late 2014, an organisation in an undisclosed location in the USA opened an unsanctioned SCS.OBJECTIVE:
To evaluate whether use of the unsanctioned SCS affected medical outcomes.DESIGN:
A prospective cohort study.SETTING:
Neighbourhoods surrounding the SCS.PARTICIPANTS:
People who injected drugs were recruited and interviewed at baseline and 6 and 12 months from 2018 to 2020. INTERVENTION People using the SCS could bring pre-obtained drugs to consume via injection, which were monitored by trained staff with naloxone. MAINMEASURES:
Any overdose, number of non-fatal overdoses, skin and soft tissue infections, emergency department utilisation, number of emergency department visits, hospitalisation and number of nights spent in hospital. KEYRESULTS:
A total of 494 participants enrolled in the study; 59 (12%) used the SCS at least once. We used propensity score weighting to analyse the association between SCS utilisation and measures. People using the SCS were 27% (95% CI 12-46%) less likely to visit the emergency department, had 54% (95% CI 33-71%) fewer emergency department visits, were 32% (95% CI 4-57%) less likely to be hospitalised, and spent 50% (95% CI 1-85%) fewer nights in hospital. Though not significant, people using the SCS had a lower likelihood of overdosing and slightly higher likelihood of skin and soft tissue infections.CONCLUSIONS:
Our findings support the use of SCS in the USA to reduce the growing burden of acute care service utilisation related to injection drug use.
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Infecções dos Tecidos Moles
/
Overdose de Drogas
Tipo de estudo:
Observational_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limite:
Humans
País/Região como assunto:
America do norte
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2022
Tipo de documento:
Article