A recent study has found that intramuscular injections of bath salts may cause necrotising fasciitis.

Researchers have found that necrotising fasciitis is a dangerous and hard to identify side effect for those abusing bath salts, or synthetic cathinones, by injecting them intravenously or intramuscularly. In a case study following one patient who presented with a painful swollen arm due to injecting bath salts two days prior, necrotising fasciitis was diagnosed. The disease was masked by a non-erythematous overlying tissue bed allowing it to spread and treatment to be delayed. The disease spread rapidly throughout the patient's arm and chest, which then required a forequarter amputation (amputation of the arm, clavicle and scapula). This study recommends that clinicians be prepared for more of these cases, as necrotising fasciitis can also be misdiagnosed as cellulitis or abscesses. Street education and public prevention are also important preventative measures advocated by this study.

The substance abuse of bath salts has been a recognisable problem since 2009. They have been formulated into oral, snortable, smokable and injectable versions, and their side effects are generally unknown. In cases of necrotising fasciitis, the average time to recognition of the disease and surgery is only 25 hours for survivors.  Non-survivors are usually not diagnosed and admitted to surgery for an average of 90 hours.

Click here to see the study.

Image: Syringe. Credit: Andres Rueda on Flickr.