Naloxone(Narcan) In you Community

Narcan Use in Pennsylvania
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Narcan Use in Pennsylvania
How and Why Narcan Works?
Opioid overdose drives an individual into coma or drowsiness, reduced respiratory rate, pinpoint pupils, abnormally slow breathing, and potentially apnoea. Mortality due to opioid overdose is triggered by respiratory depression resulting in cardiac arrest. Narcan is an opioid antagonist that reverses opioids' impacts, including respiratory depression, within the body in a few minutes (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 2015). It can be administered through an injection into the victim's muscle, into the veins, under the skin, or as a nasal spray (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2019). In the agonist drug (e.g., opioid), Narcan is nearly inert, but in persons who are in severe respiratory depression emanating from opioid overdoes, Narcan could normalize respiration, pupil size, consciousness levels, bowel activity, as well as signs and symptoms of the overdose. Narcan works due to its antagonistic impacts, making it quicken opioid withdrawal syndrome in individuals under opioid agonists' influence (European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 2015). It has an immediate action onset and shortened half-life. When administered in opioid presence, Narcan displaces it at the receptor, and therefore reversing its implications. More importantly, it reverses mortality, causing respiratory depression. This works effectively for all opioid drugs, including morphine, oxycodone, and heroin (Jauncey & Nielsen, 2017). In this vein, Narcan administration is an emergency intervention to opioid overdose.
The rationale for Narcan's broader availability, or "take-home Narcan," is that it has negligible adverse impacts, does not potentiates abuse, and effectively reverses opioids effects. When administered to a healthy individual with no opioid exposure, it has no health implications. Narcan is also less likely to cause harm if issued to an unresponsive individual for any reason other than opioid overdose (Jauncey & Nielsen, 2017).
Statistics and Trends on Narcan Use in Pennsylvania
After decades of rising overdose mortality rates, Pennsylvania started to record a modest reduction in deaths from 2017's 5,398 cases to 2018's 4,415 cases, with 2,866 such deaths linked to opioids. This reduction was significant as a result of increasing access to Narcan for opioid overdose victims. The 2019's preliminary data indicates nearly equivalent figures. An average of ten Pennsylvanians continued to lose their lives each day. Although 2020 data is not yet published, it is expected that disruptions and isolation linked to the Covid-19 crisis have made it more challenging for many to access conventional in-person services (Next Distro, 2020). Pennsylvania ranks third in terms of overdose mortality in the United States. In 2019, Bethlehem Police Department used Narcan and saved 28, 73, 72, and 45 persons in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. In Northampton County, lives saved totaled 26, 62, 54, and 38 in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively. In terms of Narcan administration trends for gender, male victims saved totaled 26, 52, 52, and 37 in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, respectively. Femal...