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. That’s because xylazine , an animal tranquilizer with no FDA-approved use in humans, is now pervasive in Philadelphia’s street fentanyl supply .
Forensic testing has revealed xylazine’s presence in over 90% of street heroin and fentanyl samples, and Pennsylvania is considered the epicenter of the xylazine crisis . 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 fo.