MERRIMACK – The CEO and owner of Pain Care
LLC worries his clinics will be painted with the same brush as the
pharmacy responsible for the tainted steroids administered at pain
clinics in New Hampshire.
“We simply administered the drug that we
thought was perfectly fine,” Dr. Michael O’Connell said Thursday. “I
think we’re very much victims like the patients.”
As many as 740 people with chronic pain
were exposed to the tainted steroids, but a majority of those are at
lower risk of infection because of the type of injection they received.
O’Connell said 215 patients received
spinal injections of the tainted steroids produced by New England
Compounding Center, a compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts.
A total of 13,000 patients received the
drug nationwide. The drug has been blamed for 119 cases of fungal
meningitis, 11 of which have been fatal. No cases have been reported in
New Hampshire.
O’Connell said Pain Care, which has 11
clinics in New Hampshire, has contacted all 215 patients who received
the drug as an epidural, and has contacted most of the 525 patients who
received injections of the drug in muscle or a joint. Those type of
injections carry a lower risk of infection, he said.
“Our hearts go out to the victims and
we’re doing everything we can to stay on top of this. I think we’re on
top of this soon enough that we’ll be able to prevent the most serious
manifestations.”
O’Connell said business at his clinics has
not dropped off but phone calls and worry has definitely increased. He
encouraged anyone who received the injections to contact the clinic if
they haven’t already, particularly if there have been symptoms that may
indicate a meningitis infection, including severe headache, fever,
nausea, dizziness, loss of balance or slurred speech.
About 50 patients have had spinal taps
either at Pain Care’s urging or to reassure themselves. Most have tested
negative but a “handful” have shown elevated white blood cell counts,
O’Connell said.
“Those could be problematic and could turn into the definition of a case of meningitis,” he said.
Only three of Pain Care’s clinics – in
Merrimack, Somersworth and Newington – received shipments of the drug,
methylprednisolone, from NECC, O’Connell said, and only patients in
Merrimack and Somersworth received spinal injections.
Compounding pharmacies make their own drug
products, and an Oct. 4 news analysis in the The New York Times said
the meningitis outbreak “was a calamity waiting to happen,” because
compounding pharmacies are lightly regulated and the legal status of
compounded drugs is unclear.
O’Connell said pain management clinics
routinely use compounded drugs and his clinics use several medications
from a number of distributors.
He said his clinics used what turned out
to be tainted drugs, in part, because they were alcohol-free. It’s
difficult to find comparable drugs from pharmaceutical companies that
don’t include alcohol as a preservative. That alcohol can damage nerves,
O’Connell said, and the pain injections are made particularly close to
nerves in many cases of chronic pain.
O’Connell said patients who received the
spinal injections mostly suffer from bulging or herniated disks in their
back which can cause sciatica. “These are people that are in severe pain chronically,” he said.
Joseph G. Cote can be reached at 594-6415 or jcote@nashuatelegraph.com. Also follow Cote on Twitter (@Telegraph_JoeC).
