Emergency medical services and poison control

Poison Centers: An Overview of the Past, Present, and Future

Poison centers are the source of expert treatment advice for all types of poison exposures. For this reason, health care providers and consumers are encouraged to call poison centers immediately in case of a possible poison exposure. This allows for rapid evaluation of potential toxicity, determination of the need for treatment, follow-up to the conclusion of a patient's clinical course, and data collection which can be useful in identifying unsuspected poisons, directing future research, and identifying subjects for poison prevention efforts.

Evaluation of regional and nonregional poison centers

The purpose of this study was to determine whether regional poison centers handle a particular poisoning situation better than nonregional centers do. Informed consent was obtained from 15 regional and 15 nonregional poison centers. A case involving salicylate ingestion by a three-year-old child was presented twice (one day call and one night call) to each center. Those answering the phone at the regional centers asked more information-gathering questions than did those at the nonregional centers (P less than 0.01) and were more proficient in their history taking (P less than 0.01). Nonregional centers did not consider the potentially toxic ingestion (220 mg per kilogram of body weight) important enough to treat or were not willing to handle the poisoning in one third of the calls. The nonregional centers recommended manual stimulation to induce emesis in 30 per cent of the calls, whereas none of the regional centers recommended this treatment. Four calls to the nonregional centers resulted in recommendations of inappropriate emetics--e.g., saltwater, raw eggs, or mustard water. The chance of obtaining incorrect recommendations for poisoning treatment from the nonregional centers was determined to be nine times greater than that from the regional centers. Indications of intention to follow up were twice as frequent among regional as among nonregional centers. These data strongly suggest that regional poison centers provide better and more consistent poison information than do nonregional centers.