Alarming Rise in Deaths Due to Steroid Epidural Injections

Posted by in Healthcare


If you’re a doctor or medical provider who is treating patients for backache with steroid epidural injections, you’ve got to be alarmed over the steady rise of meningitis outbreaks—now approaching 100 in nine states nationwide. Eight people have already lost their lives and hundreds more could be affected. Several patients also suffered strokes that may have resulted from their infection.

 

As recently reported in USA Today, the tainted steroid, produced by New England Compounding Center was recalled Sept. 26. Unfortunately, about 17,700 vials of the steroids were shipped to 75 clinics in 23 states where patients have already been injected.

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned clinicians to actively contact patients who received potentially contaminated injections starting May 21, 2012. The suspect medicines are associated with three lots of preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate (80mg/ml). Aspergillus, the fungus blamed for the outbreak is airborne and often found in leaf mold, according to William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville.

 

"All patients who may have received these medications need to be tracked down immediately," said Benjamin Park, medical officer, at the CDC's mycotic diseases branch. "It is possible that if patients with infection are identified soon and put on appropriate anti-fungal therapy, lives may be saved." 

 

Healthcare providers and patients have been alerted to look for symptoms of the infection, including fever, new or worsening headache, neck stiffness, sensitivity to light, new weakness or numbness, increasing pain, redness or swelling of the injection site. These symptoms generally appear from 1 to 4 weeks after patients have been injected. Not all patients who received the medicine will become sick.

 

While claiming that none of its other products have been contaminated, The New England Compounding Center recalled all of its products as a precautionary measure. The Food and Drug Administration had previously told health professionals not to use any of the center's distributed products, and health officials said they found foreign material in other products produced by the center.

 

Anders Cohen, chief of neurosurgery and spine surgery at the Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York, advises patients to wait until the CDC's investigation is completed before getting steroid injections. The tainted steroids "are such a potential health hazard for patients because the medication is site specific, delivered to the spinal canal, and nerves in the spinal cord," said Cohen.

 

Cohen indicated that this outbreak underscores the stress in the pharmaceutical industry, which is under pressure to produce volumes of certain medications. Companies unable to keep up with demand will outsource production and rely on compounding pharmacies, which make their own medications from basic ingredients. Compounding companies can side-step the stringent regulatory guidelines that govern pharmaceutical companies.

 

If you’re a healthcare professional, you should advise patients about getting these steroid shots. Some healthcare providers are recommending patients wait; others suggest patients consider taking oral pain medications.

 

Photo courtesy of MorgueFile.com

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  • Noble B
    Noble B
    I read this post fully on the topic of the difference of newest and earlier technologies, it's awesome article.
  • Johnie
    Johnie
    This is what we need - an insight to make everyone think
  • Alex Kecskes
    Alex Kecskes
    Thanks for your comments, and for sharing your stories. Hopefully,  the publicity will force labs to be more vigilant about contamination.
  • Ronie
    Ronie
    Hi Mary Ann, thanks for shraing your story. Your symptoms seem to be very similar to Annette's. It's interesting that you have had it before without having this type of side effect. You are certainly not the first on the site to report this. After watching Annette suffer from many of these same side effects, my heart goes out to you!! I am sure that your symptoms will ease, this has been our experience. Although to be honest we are not clear from all symptoms yet (its been just over 6 months now), there has been a huge improvement after the first 3 months. So.. the message is, hang in there, it definitely will get better :-) One of the most frustrating things for us has been the lack of information that we got from our doctor. The first response we get from everyone is that Botox is safe and that it does not cause these symptoms   even though these symptoms are listed on the product warnings. What is not well understood it seems is how long these symptoms last, and just how severe they are !! Please keep us updated on your progress, we are thinking of you !!!
  • Demetria H
    Demetria H
    This is truly a bad situation with this outbreak. I had this injection on 09/15/2012 and I have had serious bad headache, I reported it to my doctor and not once have they said anything about this outbreak. They have just recently scheduled me to have another one on the 25th of OCT 2012. I am in so much pain that I really don"t know what to do. My lower back is in worse shape now that I have had the surgery than it was before the surgery.
  • Alex Kecskes
    Alex Kecskes
    Good points, Joni.  Thanks for your comment.
  • Madeline G
    Madeline G
    My dear friend nearly died from these injections.  She is not out of the woods yet.  She became ill less than a week after her second round.  She went into a hospital where she stayed for ten days and they could not figure out what was wrong with her.  She was chemically restrained for this period of time and then sent to her son's house via taxi because they wouldn't wait for him to pick her up!  She was at his home for less than four hours when she was transported to the Mayo clinic in Phoenix for another three or four days.  When she got back to Richmond and called the spine clinic, they of course denied having tainted injections.  She nearly lost her life and again, she is still so sick she is having to have labs drawn every few days to follow her treatment.  She feels she has no recourse, but I think she needs to get every record from her spinal treatments.
  • Joni Caggiano
    Joni Caggiano
    This is extremely frightening information.  I have had six such injections about 1.5 years ago and this is not something that you would research after having had the injection.  People typically research procedures prior to the date of their procedure.  So I hope that anyone who has had a shot in the back or neck area which may be called a trigger point injection call their Dr.'s office and make sure that they did not receive tainted shipments and also what they need to report in terms of symptoms post injection.  Joni

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