Although innovative in comfortable design, medication patches are proving to be riskier than the public had originally thought. Patches for such remedial uses as motion-sickness control have been around for the past 25 years, but newer designs have been raising a bit of a conundrum. New studies are showing that there is an increased danger to the patches when they are heated – someone taking a bath, for example, is speeding up their blood flow and therefore increasing the amount of medication their body is taking. This is potentially lethal in certain drugs, and with a new anti-depressant patch fresh into the market the level of concern elevates further. There have been issues with patches such as Ortho Evra concerning estrogen levels in women; with an increase to this problem with heat we may be seeing a small correlation between death rates in warmer climates with the amount of patches being used. The patches have already killed eight people in 2004 and three in 2003, causing suspicion of the patches in more than 30 cases where patients were hospitalized, disabled or left with a life-threatening complication.
Many of the heat-related concerns with medical patch safety encircle the drug fentanyl, but not exclusively. Daytrana, a controversial ADHD patch for children, and Ortho Evra are still being kept under close watch. Scientists are working hard to continue the improvement of the patches so as to uphold their remarkable convenience for consumers, but nothing will be declaired “perfect” for quite some time. If you or someone you know has been injured by a defective product, contact a personal injury lawyer such as Trantolo and Trantolo of Hartford, Connecticut.
