IDUs indulge in a number of unsafe injecting practices, making themselves vulnerable to the development of abscesses.
• IDUs inject at places which are not frequented by the general community. These may include railway tracks, abandoned buildings, cremation grounds, by the side of an open drain/sewer. These unhygienic places can pose a definitive risk for infection and abscesses.
• IDUs may lack adequate knowledge on how to inject safely. Also, IDUs do not get enough time to practice safe injection and hence IDUs invariably inject in a hurry. This may be due to withdrawal, fear of police or fear of getting caught in the act of injecting. As a result, they may not clean the site properly before injecting, inject in unsafe veins, spill the drug out of the vein during injecting or may inject in arteries. These improper techniques of injection can result in abscess formation.
• Sharing needles and syringes and using non-sterile injecting paraphernalia can
lead to the formation of abscesses, apart from contracting blood-borne diseases like HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C.
• The IDU may repeatedly use the needles/syringes used by him/her earlier. Reusing the same needle over and over again results in blunting the tip of the needle. The blunting of the tip results in damage to the vein into which it is injected and can lead to the formation of the abscess.
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