Drug Abuse Among People Referred to Major Emergency Hospitals (Kermanshah 1998-1999 )

History & Objective : Illicit  drug Use is a serious social  problem in Kermanshah.  Due to lack of enough  information  about  prevalence of drug-abuse, present study was carried  out to determine the prevalence and demoghraphic information about drug  users in this city .

Materials  & Methods : The subjects of this descriptive study included 4005 cases who were refferd to Emergency Units of  Imam  Khomini , Taleghani and Shaheed Fahmideh hospitals between 1998 and 1999. Demographic information of the subjects was collected through a questionnaire. To detect the presence of morphine in urine, urine samples of all cases were analyzed by screening and confrimatory methods.

For rapid identification , immunochromatography technique, was used as initial screening. Then the positive results were confirmed by Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) method.

Results :  Application of screening techniques revealed 12.4% of the total population of the study (4005) were positive , while in confirmatory method only 4.7% of them were positive. 3454 of cases were male and 496 were female.

Discussion : Pervalence of drug abuse was 4.7 % in this study. Since the chances of interference of some drugs, such as codaine in rapid techniques is quite high; the positive results of screening methods are only presumptive. Hence to confirm the results
of rapid techniques for detection of opium in urine samples, it is recommended to use
confirmatory methods such as TLC.