Mortality, morbidity, and cardiac surgery in Injection Drug Use (IDU)-associated versus non-IDU infective endocarditis: The need to expand substance use disorder treatment and harm reduction services.

Background: The addiction crisis is widespread, and unsafe injection practices among people who inject drugs (PWID) can lead to infective endocarditis.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of adult patients with definite or possible infective endocarditis admitted to a tertiary care center in Portland, Maine was performed over three-year period. Our primary objective was to examine differences in demographics, health characteristics, and health service utilization between injection drug use (IDU)-associated infective endocarditis and non-IDU infective endocarditis.

Differentiating trauma from taphonomic alterations.

Differentiating traumatic injuries in bone from taphonomic damage in the postmortem period is a complex process requiring a systematic approach. Trauma by definition occurs while the individual is still living, but bone characteristics usually do not allow delineation of the moment of death. Thus, the anthropologist seeks characteristics that will associate a skeletal defect with the perimortem period, at or about the time of death.

Determining spatial access to opioid use disorder treatment and emergency medical services in New Hampshire.

This research presents an analysis of spatial access to both opioid use disorder treatment facilities and emergency medical services in New Hampshire during 2015-2016, a period during which there was a steep increase in unintentional overdoses involving fentanyl. For this research, spatial access was computed using the enhanced two-step floating catchment area model combined with the Huff model to assess access across New Hampshire and gives attention to supply-side parameters that can impact spatial access. The model is designed to measure access to healthcare services for opioid use disorder patients offered at treatment centers or from buprenorphine treatment practitioners, as well as from emergency medical services across New Hampshire.

Additive Effects of Cointoxicants in Single-Opioid Induced Deaths.

A forensic drug database (FDD) was used to capture comprehensive data from all drug-related deaths in West Virginia, with deaths also included from the northern New England states of Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. All four states serve predominantly rural populations under two million and all have similar state medical examiner systems that employ statewide uniform death certification policies and practices. This study focused on 1482 single opioid deaths (fentanyl, hydrocodone, methadone, and oxycodone) in the FDD from 2007-2011.

Adult scurvy in New France: Samuel de Champlain's "Mal de la terre" at Saint Croix Island, 1604-1605.

Diagnosing scurvy (vitamin C deficiency) in adult skeletal remains is difficult despite documentary evidence of its past prevalence. Analysis of 20 European colonists buried at Saint Croix Island in New France during the winter of 1604-1605, accompanied by their leader Samuel de Champlain's eyewitness account of their symptoms, provided the opportunity to document lesions of adult scurvy within a tightly dated historical context. Previous diagnoses of adult scurvy have relied predominantly on the presence of periosteal lesions of the lower limbs and excessive antemortem tooth loss.

Fingering a murderer: a successful anthropological and radiological collaboration.

We illustrate an interdisciplinary approach to identify a victim in a case with complex taphonomic and procedural issues. Burning, fragmentation, species commingling, and examination by multiple experts required anthropological preparation and analysis combined with radiographic adaptations to image and match trabecular patterns in unusually small, burned specimens. A missing person was last seen in the company of a reclusive female on a remote rural property.