Spice Spice Baby

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We have been receiving dozens of spice patients recently who have been holding up beds in the ER and ICU. Just wondering if any other areas have been seeing the same increase in usage?

There are three hospitals here in Anchorage and our EMS often responds to calls of group spice usage and treating it as a mass casualty event.... a few usually end up intubated. Its eating up resources and burning out EMS and ER staff.

Episode 27: Spice Roulette | Frontiers | KTVA Anchorage CBS 11

Spice: Street drug continues to plague Anchorage homeless | KTVA Anchorage CBS 11

Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.

We had a spice case recently who came in essentially unresponsive (only to pain) after seizing and aspirating his stomach contents. He was barely responsive but combative when he did "wake up" for a second. He was 19. He kept throwing up dark chunks of stuff. He was intubated. We used propofol to sedate. We had to titrate very slowly. Then his temp dropped to 34.9. I dont know if he was going septic from the aspiration or if this is from the spice itself. Fortunately we dont see too many cases on the adult side.

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Every day we have a pile of them. I asked one guy why he wouldn't just stick to the natural stuff and he said it was because he is on parole and it won't show up in the urine tests.

At least he's honest.

It's bath salts in a different format. We get a lot of it here and it causes all kinds of heart failure and rhabdo from the body trying to keep up with it. Some go to ICU, others sleep it off and go home. Sad to see a kid who will have CHF for the rest of his life at age 18.

Also, people keep calling it "Spike" here instead of spice. No idea why.

Yup. No testing. Not an arrest if it's in your pocket. Extremely varied presentations. Sometimes I wonder why we work so hard against natural selection. I find it interesting personally. People are going to do what they are going to do. I get to be there and watch the crisis they create. I love it.

It's the new onset lung cancer with mets to the liver presenting with liver failure that I hate. Or the new onset ALS. Or the kid that's being abused. Or an elderly couple that dies from a home invasion. Dealing with people who are in there fighting us for the 6th time after seizing and going into rhabdo...meh. I don't lose sleep over their lives. They choose to kill themselves.

Of course the 18 y/o experimenting going down the drain is rough as well. I didn't grow up wearing virgin white. There, but for the grace of God...

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Specializes in Emergency.

Had a k2 smoker last night. Got violent, real violent. Still in restraints when i left.

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Specializes in ER, PACU, ICU.

Anchorage Fire and Spice

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Specializes in ER, PACU, ICU.

Interesting about it being called Spike.... another name to look out for. Yea its intersting to see who can just sleep it off and who ends up with organ failure, CHF, or violent.

I asked a patient why they use it knowing that it can be so dangerous and his response was that it was cheap.

Every day we have a pile of them. I asked one guy why he wouldn't just stick to the natural stuff and he said it was because he is on parole and it won't show up in the urine tests.

At least he's honest.

It's bath salts in a different format. We get a lot of it here and it causes all kinds of heart failure and rhabdo from the body trying to keep up with it. Some go to ICU, others sleep it off and go home. Sad to see a kid who will have CHF for the rest of his life at age 18.

Also, people keep calling it "Spike" here instead of spice. No idea why.

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NYC finally banned it....in 2016! Don't know what the hold up is.

We were seeing a lot this summer. Down to one a week now, mostly older men 50-70, homeless (won't show up in pee test for shelters).

My mom works on a vent/total care unit and she's got quite a few there, most of them are paras.

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Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.

We had another spice case the other night. A teenager. He was unarrousable, but would wake up randomly and start screaming very loudly. My patient's daughter asked me if the staff was hurting him and if that was why he was screaming. The patient went bradycardic into the 20s and had a very long pause (asystole?).

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A week ago this past sunday had two young friends of mine die due to this drug 18 yo female hallucenating while driving 80-90 swerved and hit a tree

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Unresponsive and bradycardic has been a common presentation here. Particularly after an initial episode of hallucinations and violent towards ems/ER staff. Also etco2 drops into the low 20's

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