HEROIN BRAIN DAMAGE RISING

The number of victims of heroin-induced brain damage, who are sometimes left
blind, paralysed or incontinent, has increased dramatically in recent years,
figures show.

Many are left unable to care for themselves, but they are forgotten
statistics, ignored amid the publicity surrounding drug deaths and
drug-related crime.

Others make significant recoveries and the signs of their brain damage might
be subtle. Occasionally they might encounter memory difficulties, behavior
problems or decision-making difficulties.

Some need just a couple of weeks of rehabilitation, the more severely
injured more than six months. And others are simply too acutely ill to be
sent to rehabilitation programs.

Before the 1990s, heroin-related brain damage was a phenomenon rarely seen
by the Melbourne rehabilitation medicine specialists, Dr David Burke and Dr
Barry Rawicki.

Now, heroin overdose has replaced injury as the major cause of brain damage
requiring treatment at the Royal Talbot Rehabilitation Centre's acquired
brain injury unit in Kew, where Dr Burke is a consultant.

Dr Burke, a rehabilitation specialist for nearly 35 years, said he was
saddened and disturbed by the growing toll.

"In the past two years it's been a new disease process for us, and it seems
to be very much on the increase, because particularly in the past six months
it's been very busy," Dr Burke said. Last year at least 11 patients with
brain damage from a heroin overdose were referred to Royal Talbot. In 1997,
the unit treated five patients suffering brain damage from a heroin overdose
and in 1996, none at all. Two young men are still waiting for a bed in the
12-bed unit.

Last month The Age revealed that up to 10,000 patients were treated in
Victorian hospitals each year for drug overdoses. Generally, the victims of
heroin-related brain damage are aged between the late teens and early 30s.
Most are men, some destined to spend the rest of their days in a nursing
home.

Dr Burke said the victims came from all groups in society. Some were
long-term drug users, some had a drug habit and psychiatric illness, some
were possibly drug peddlers and users and others were probably just
experimenting, he said.

Often the drug overdose patients rehabilitating in the brain injury unit at
Royal Talbot are isolated people, estranged from families and lacking social
supports. But others are simply from middle-class Melbourne.

The role of heroin and other drugs in brain injury is also about to be
examined in a Melbourne study. The research, by the director of
rehabilitation medicine at the Epworth Hospital, Associate Professor John
Olver, and other researchers, will investigate how many people who suffer
brain injury from road and other accident trauma had drugs or alcohol in
their system.

Professor Olver said it was hoped the research would give doctors a better
understanding of how to rehabilitate these patients.