Findings

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Program Evaluation of Opiate Addicts

 Employment status of patients:

 Most patients (79%) were working citizens and a small percentage (21%) were students.

Findings

 Pulse rates:

 80% of patients had pulse rates above normal (100120) prior to administration of buprenorphrine.

 56% of these had developed normal pulse rates of below 80beats/min 30 minutes after induction.

 Mean pulse rates fell gradually afterwards until the rates normalized in two hours.

 Sweating and chills:

 patients had severe sweating before buprenorphrine administration.

 There was marked decrease in sweating in 88% of the patients 30 minutes after buprenorphrine administration.

 There was a significant drop in the number of patients suffering from severe sweating as time progressed to 4 hours

Findings

 Restlessness:

 prior to administration of buprenorphrine, 72%of the patients were unable to sit well even for a few seconds and had extraneous limb movement.

 58% of the patients were able to sit well within 30 minutes after treatment.

 At 2 hours after induction, restlessness had improved tremendously

 At four hours, the relaxing and easing effects of the drug had stabilized.

 Pupil size:

 Buprenorphrine reduced the number of patients with severe pupil dilation so that only the rim of the iris was visible and increased the number of patients with normal pupil size.

Findings

 64% of the patients had normal pupil size after within 2 hours of induction and 22% had near normal pupils.

 Only 8% of all subjects had dilated pupils 2 hours after buprenorphrine administration.

 Four hours after the first dose was induced, the effects of buprenorphrine were still evident.

Bone/joint aches:

 Before induction of buprenorphrine, patients had mild to severe and diffuse joint pain.

 30 minutes after first induction, 51% of the patients had mild pains while 38% did not feel any pain.

 63% of patients were free of joint pain at 2 hours after induction.

Findings

 Running nose and tear development:

 The number of patients with constant running noses reduced from 79% to 6% after 2 hours of buprenorphrine administration.

 Nose stiffness and rhinorrhea had reduced remarkably after buprenorphrine administration.

 Effects of buprenorphrine of the GIT:

 Within 30 minutes of induction, episodes of vomiting and multiple diarrhea reduced from 140 to 25.

 At 2 hours, the efficacy of the drug remained stable with a slight decrease in nausea and multiple diarrhea cases.

 At 4 hours, the effects of buprenorphrine had stabilized and were similar to those recorded at 2 hours.

Findings

 Anxiety and irritability:

 The number of patients who were obviously irritable and severely irritable reduced from 165 to 51 thirty minutes after drug induction.

 4 hours after initial induction, 58% of the patients were not irritable and 30% were slightly irritable.

 Only 12% (26 patients) were still obviously or extremely irritable 4 hours after the initial dose.

 Yawning:

 Yawning behavior reduced at 30 minutes after the first dose.

 The number of patients who did not yawn increased from 27% to 57% after the 4 hours of treatment.

 On a scale of 1-8, buprenorphrine scored a mean of 5.64 thus its performance was satisfactory.