WARNINGS
No information provided.
PRECAUTIONS
General
Head Injury and Increased Intracranial Pressure: The respiratory depressant effects of narcotics and their capacity to elevate cerebrospinal-fluid pressure may be markedly exaggerated in the presence of head injury, other intracranial lesions, or a preexisting increase in intracranial pressure. Furthermore, narcotics produce additional effects that may obscure the clinical course in patients with head injuries.
Acute Abdominal Conditions: The administration of morphine or other narcotics may obscure the diagnosis or clinical course in patients with acute abdominal conditions.
Special-Risk Patients: Morphine should be given with caution to certain patients, such as the elderly or debilitated and those with severe impairment of hepatic or renal function, hypothyroidism, Addison's disease, and prostatic hypertrophy or urethral stricture.
Morphine should be used with extreme caution in patients with disorders characterized by hypoxia, since even usual therapeutic doses of narcotics may decrease respiratory drive to the point of apnea while simultaneously increasing airway resistance.
Hypotensive Effect: The administration of morphine may result in severe hypotension in the postoperative patient or any individual whose ability to maintain blood pressure has been compromised by a depleted blood volume or the administration of such drugs as the phenothiazines or certain anesthetics.
Supraventricular Tachycardias: Because of a possible vagolytic action that may produce a significant increase in the ventricular response rate, morphine should be used with caution in patients with atrial flutter and other supraventricular tachycardias.
Convulsions: Morphine may aggravate preexisting convulsions in patients with convulsive disorders. If dosage is escalated substantially above recommended levels because of tolerance development, convulsions may occur in individuals without a history of convulsive disorders.
Carcinogenesis, Mutagenesis, Impairment of Fertility
Paregoric (anhydrous morphine) has no known carcinogenic or mutagenic potential. However no longterm animal studies are available to support this observation.
Usage in Pregnancy
Pregnancy Category C: Animal reproduction studies have not been conducted with morphine. It is not known whether morphine can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman or can affect reproduction capacity. Paregoric (anhydrous morphine) should be given to a pregnant woman only if clearly needed.
Nursing Mothers
Morphine appears in the milk of nursing mothers. Caution should be exercised when paregoric (anhydrous morphine) is administered to a nursing woman.