METH LAB BURN VICTIMS ARE A PROBLEM FOR HOSPITALS

LITTLE ROCK - They often arrive anonymously, dumped in the hospital's
emergency room bay with burns over their bodies.

Some become blind because they won't tell a doctor how they were burned,
afraid that if they mention any of the chemicals used to make
methamphetamine they'll be prosecuted.

As the number of burn victims from methamphetamine lab explosions and fires
rises, doctors at burn units say they've had to take a new approach to
treating patients.

"They hardly ever say, 'I was working on my meth lab,' " said Jimmy Parks,
a nurse in the burn unit at Arkansas Children's Hospital. "Usually, 'The
water heater blew up.' And then it kind of comes along when we finally work
it out."

The patients drain already financially strapped burn units, Parks said.
Statistics from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency show that Missouri had
2,207 methamphetamine lab seizures in 2001, up from 863 in 2000. The
numbers are lower for Arkansas, with 366 seizures in 2001, up from 235 in
2000. And in Oklahoma there were 580 in 2001, up from 383 in 2000. In
general, the numbers are much higher for Southern states.

"You can pretty much guess that people who are running meth labs out of
their back room are not insured," Parks said. "Percentage-wise they tax
more than the average patients."

That's not the only problem patients injured in methamphetamine lab
accidents bring to burn units.

"These guys come in and we have the police sitting with them sometimes,"
Parks said. "Sometimes they leave against medical advice. They're afraid
they're going to get in trouble with the law."

Doctors take great pains to treat meth manufacturers whose shops blow up,
said Dr. Ken Larson, who heads the burn unit at St. John's Hospital in
Springfield, Mo. He said it's his job to treat the patient and the police's
to fix the methamphetamine crime.

"That's a fine line," he said. "It's not something where I'm willing to
call the police department, where I say, 'Joe over here, he's been making
meth and you need to check out his house."'

Larson said doctor-patient confidentiality enters the equation. Police say
they would visit with prosecutors before questioning any medical workers.

"We wouldn't do anything to jeopardize the doctor-patient relationship,"
said Capt. Mike Davidson of the Arkansas State Police. "But some doctors
might be willing to openly discuss what would have been said."

Larson is writing a paper he plans to distribute to hospitals that
regularly deal with injuries from meth lab explosions. He said that
emergency workers on the front lines need to know what to look for when
they first treat the patients, and that workers can expect the patients to lie.

"There's always a danger to the paramedics," Larson said. "They (the burn
victim) can still have chemicals on them, so they can get my personnel
contaminated."

Common injuries include chemical burns and scalds to the skin. Other
chemicals can blind a victim by seeping into their eyes and melting their
corneas. Those burns take days to set in.

Pam Tuck worked as a nurse at St. John's and said that patients wouldn't
'fess up to her about how they got hurt, even though she could often tell
the cause.

"I would say to them, 'If you were making meth and you got this in your
eyes you could go blind, so you have to come clean with me,"' Tuck said.
"If they tell us and they're honest with us, then we can help them, but in
two days the damage is irreversible."'