Word: ultrarapid
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...message taken home by millions of E.R. viewers is that ultra-rapid detox is a shortcut to drug withdrawal. And that's a problem, say many doctors. They fear it will result in a stampede of new patients to the controversial and still experimental procedure. Ultrarapid detox, they charge, has not been adequately studied and is often promoted by medical entrepreneurs who make exaggerated claims and operate out of hotel rooms and storefronts...
Addicts who can afford ultrarapid detox--the procedure costs as much as $10,000--are attracted to it because they can escape days and even weeks of agonizing withdrawal symptoms. They are given an antagonist, usually naltrexone or naloxone, that quickly displaces opiates and attaches itself to the same brain receptors that opiates seek out. During the several hours of detoxification, patients are under general anesthesia and unaware of the severe "shake and bake" symptoms they are enduring. Still, they are often dizzy, exhausted and barely able to walk after awakening. And they need the same follow-up counseling...
...these treatment boutiques and the businessmen who are promoting them that have given rapid detox a bad name, says Dr. Ron Wender, head of anesthesiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Wender's experience at the CITA center at Cedars-Sinai has convinced him that ultrarapid detox, properly performed and with appropriate follow-up, "should be welcomed with open arms...
What prompted E.R.'s producers to air the ultrarapid detox drama? Critics point to an April article in the Wall Street Journal that detailed instances of TV shows being successfully lobbied by medical foundations and others to include dramatizations of specific diseases. In one example the Journal described how the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation wooed Dr. Neal Baer, an E.R. writer and producer, besieging him with studies on the increased risk of contracting AIDS for those with chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease--a risk that was then mentioned...
Baer denies that he was lobbied to put either chlamydia or rapid-detox on E.R. Chlamydia is a common problem and so, in Hollywood, is heroin addiction; one marquee actor is reported to have gone through ultrarapid detox just in time for this year's Academy Awards. In fact, says Baer, the idea for the detox episode came from a pediatric anesthesiologist invited by E.R. to help generate story lines...