World Opioid and Substance Use Epidemic: A Latin American Perspective.

The opioid crisis is a growing social and public health phenomenon, particularly in developed countries such as the United States. Since the 1990s, this crisis has shown a variety of causal processes and consequences and has affected quality of life for millions of individuals, families, and communities across the globe. Although abuse of opioid-based painkillers appears to have triggered the epidemic in the United States, in this article, the problem is examined with a focus on Latin America, where drug-associated problems constitute threats to the health and quality of life for large segments of the population.

Heart rate variability for assessing comatose patients with different Glasgow Coma Scale scores.

Objective: To assess the autonomic nervous system (ANS) in coma by heart rate variability (HRV).

Methods: Sixteen comatose patients and 22 normal subjects with comparable ages and genders were studied. Patients were classified in two subgroups according to the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS).