4 ms·
Just adding my two cents to this discussion as someone who prescribes this stuff and has taken care of people with liver failure. Agree that acetaminophen/tyle
by sithu 13y ago
Just adding my two cents to this discussion as someone who prescribes this stuff and has taken care of people with liver failure.
Agree that acetaminophen/tylenol/paracetamol is the safest OTC and non-OTC analgesic within the 'safe' dose limit <4000mg/24h (pills are typically 325/500/650mg)
Liver failure from tylenol toxicity that is not a suicide attempt is actually quite rare. People that intentionally overdose and die usually take large amounts, like 10-20gm AND don't come to the hospital until very late or when they are found by someone else. Smaller doses and arriving in hospital within a day can usually be treated quite successfully with N-acetylcysteine/NAC.
Tylenol + Alcohol = Lowers the dose needed for liver injury.
Alcohol causes orders of magnitude more damage to livers and to our society than tylenol does. More than half the liver transplants here are at least partially related to alcohol, and the rest are mostly hepatitis C, fatty liver, cancer, autoimmune, etc. People on the transplant list do tend to drink "a lot", such as 5-10 bottles of beer/day for 10-20 years
Tylenol is combined with opiates (eg. Tylenol#3, Percocet, Vicodin) because both work in the central nervous system (as opposed to NSAIDs that work peripherally), resulting in a synergistic effect.
Aspirin and other NSAIDs (ibuprofen/Advil, naproxen/Aleeve) are ok when used occasionally, but long-term chronic use has side effects as mentioned (eg. bleeding, kidney injury, can precipitate heart attacks in people with coronary disease, etc.)
- chrisbennet 13y agoExtremely helpful comment. Don't understand why someone voted it down.
- ekianjo 13y agoIt's worth adding that long-term observational studies with Aspirin intake have shown high colleration with the reduction of certain types of cancer (colorectal, esophageal, mainly), while the internal bleeding issue remains a potential concern: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22440112 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22440112