Xylazine or “tranq” wounds – characterized by deep pockets of dead tissue – have become increasingly visible in Philadelphia among people who use drugs.
Rachel McFadden is an emergency room nurse at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and also works at a wound care clinic in Kensington in North Philadelphia that serves people who use drugs. She spoke with The Conversation U.S. about how to treat xylazine wounds and how the stigma around them prevents people from getting medical care and other help.
When did you start seeing xylazine wounds?
Before xylazine, most of the wounds we treated were skin infections like abscesses. These conditions develop when a bit of bacteria gets under the skin and a pocket of infection forms. When treated with antibiotics, these infections normally clear up quickly.
At the end of 2019, participants at the wound care clinic started to come in with a different kind of wound. They were filled with black and yellow dead tissue and tunneled deep into the skin. They were not wounds from infection but rather from tissue death or necrosis.
Initially, our clinic patients found that if they changed dope “stamps” – something like a brand in the unregulated drug market – the wounds would heal on their own. But by the end of 2020, people were developing these wounds no matter what stamp they used.
Even more troubling to me and the people I was seeing in the clinic was that the wounds seemed to develop on parts of the body where no injection had occurred, and even on patients who were snorting or smoking the dope and not injecting at all.
Warning: This article contains graphic images.
Xylazine or “tranq” wounds – characterized by deep pockets of dead tissue – have become increasingly visible in Philadelphia among people who use drugs.
Rachel McFadden is an emergency room nurse at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and also works at a wound care clinic in Kensington in North Philadelphia that serves people who use drugs. She spoke with The Conversation U.S. about how to treat xylazine wounds and how the stigma around them prevents people from getting medical care and other help.
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