Adverse Effects
The adverse effects of pethidine administration are primarily those of the opioids as a class: nausea, vomiting, sedation, dizziness, diaphoresis, urinary retention and constipation. Unlike other opioids, it does not cause miosis. Overdosage can cause muscle flaccidity, respiratory depression, obtundedness, cold and clammy skin, hypotension and coma. A narcotic antagonist such as naloxone is indicated to reverse respiratory depression. Serotonin syndrome has occurred in patients receiving concurrent antidepressant therapy with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or monoamine oxidase inhibitors. Convulsive seizures sometimes observed in patients receiving parenteral pethidine on a chronic basis have been attributed to accumumulation in plasma of the metabolite norpethidine (normeperidine). Fatalities have occurred following either oral or intravenous pethidine overdosage.
Read more about this topic: Pethidine
Famous quotes containing the words adverse and/or effects:
“[Religious establishment] is adverse to the diffusion of the light of Christianity ... [because] with an ignoble and unchristian timidity it would [be] circumscribed, with a wall of defence, against the encroachments of error.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Society’s double behavioral standard for women and for men is, in fact, a more effective deterrent than economic discrimination because it is more insidious, less tangible. Economic disadvantages involve ascertainable amounts, but the very nature of societal value judgments makes them harder to define, their effects harder to relate.”
—Anne Tucker (b. 1945)