respiratory depression


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Related to respiratory depression: respiratory failure, Respiratory Distress

respiratory depression

a decrease in the ability to exhale and inhale. It is a common side effect of anesthetic, narcotic, and sedative drugs.
Synonym: reduced ventilation
See also: depression
Medical Dictionary, © 2009 Farlex and Partners

Patient discussion about respiratory depression

Q. can respiratory problems cause depression? is it common? I know that not being able to breath comfortably is really frustrating...

A. ALL illness and I mean ALL have the potential for causing depression.
Illness isn't a happy event and the emotional reaction parallels Elizabeth Kubler Ross's 7 stages.

More discussions about respiratory depression
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References in periodicals archive ?
In our current study, in group B 2 patients had respiratory depression and 1 patient had hypotension and in none of the patients in group B had hypotension or respiratory depression which were not significant (p>0.05).
Mebias has produced proprietary mu-opioid agonists designed to achieve analgesia without respiratory depression, constipation, sedation, and addiction potential seen in standard opioids.
It is used to reverse opioid-induced respiratory depression. Higher doses of naloxone are required where the drug being reversed has a high affinity for opioid receptors.
During these 5 min, any adverse events that occurred before esthetic induction were recorded, such as dizziness, vertigo, cough, nausea, sedation, and respiratory depression. Systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), HR, RR, E[sub]t CO[sub]2, and BIS were simultaneously recorded at 1 min (T1), 3 min (T2), and 5 min (T3) after the injection of oxycodone.
EarlySense, a provider of contact-free, continuous monitoring solutions for the healthcare continuum,stated on Tuesday that its EarlySense system has been found to detect and alert opioid-induced respiratory depression with high positive predictive value.
None of the patients in our study, who needed fasciotomy (10.5%), underwent fasciotomy and Turkish study showed the same.8 Three patients (2.6%) presented to us with respiratory depression of which 2(1.8%) needed intubation and this result is in contrast to the Turkish study where patients were wrongly intubated.8 Again lack of training and lack of transfer protocols in Pakistan are the prime causes.
For example, the OxyContin 80mg tablet -- which is as powerful as 24 tablets of Vicodin -- can cause fatal respiratory depression when taken by a person without a high opioid tolerance.
According to the DEA, just two to three milligrams of fentanyl--an amount equivalent to five to seven grains of table salt--is capable of causing respiratory depression and arrest, and potentially even death, if it is ingested, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin or eyes.
Also, children with obstructive sleep apnea are at risk of opioid-related respiratory depression.
Respiratory depression is a troublesome and dose-limiting adverse effect associated with opioids that can limit their potential to provide adequate analgesia [5].
Moreover, due to the risk of developing hypertension from pain and, in some cases, respiratory depression, hypotension, and bradycardia from the anesthetics and analgesics used, patients should be closely monitored during the procedure, and the staff must be prepared for emergency situations [3,6,9].
Inspite of its proven efficacy of morphine in pain management, the greatest limiting factor in its routine use is adverse effects such as respiratory depression, addiction, dependence, tolerance, nausea, vomiting, sedation, purities, and urinary retention.

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