Assisted living center investigated

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - State officials are investigating an assisted living center where three residents were put on feeding tubes a few months after being injected with Dysport, a drug similar to Botox.

Department of Aging and Disability Services officials don't know whether the drug caused the Austin State Supported Living Center residents to need feeding tubes, agency spokeswoman Cecilia Fedorov told the Austin American-Statesman. The department is looking at whether the living center provided proper oversight of the treatments.

"There is no medical cause-effect relationship that has been established between those Botox-type treatments and the feeding tubes," Fedorov said, noting that the patients already needed help eating before getting the injections.

But, she added, "there's nothing to say it was absolutely not related to the treatments, either."

The physician who treated the residents, Dr. Joe Urquidez, told the newspaper that he doubts the injections caused the problems, especially since Dysport wears off after three months.

But the doctor said he would not have given a second round of treatment in one case if the center's staff had told him that the patient had problems swallowing after the first treatment.

Urquidez does not work at the living center but went there to treat patients.

The center serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities who are medically fragile or have behavioral problems.

Urquidez said he recently learned that the facility staff failed to follow recommended plans for physical and occupational therapy after the injections and that was "certainly upsetting and concerning to me."

Twenty of the more than 400 residents at the center had been getting injections to control drooling or treat a severe muscle tightening problem known as spasticity.

The facility stopped the treatments late last month after receiving preliminary findings of an investigation by the department's regulatory division in response to a complaint about the injections, Fedorov said.

The ongoing investigation has raised oversight concerns and led to the center's medical staff being trained to identify and respond to possible adverse side effects of the drug Dysport, including trouble swallowing, slurred speech, lethargy and pain in case the treatments are restarted.

Dysport, like Botox, is a purified form of botulinum toxin and is commonly used to smooth wrinkles.