["Extensive" toxicologic research in emergencies: a luxury or a necessity?].
The "undiscriminate" toxicological screening is a tool of potentially extraordinary help, allowing not only the identification of unknown and/or presumed substances in the blood or urine, but also enabling to define, the role of toxic products in a given clinical situation. In order to determine the real utility of this screening, we carried out a retrospective analysis covering the totality of these requests in the emergency unit of our hospital over a period of six months. 74 cases were collected and divided into 3 different categories (necessary, optional and useless). Overall, we found that only 28% of the requests were justified.
Jolivet
Pascaline
P
Département de Médecine, CMCU & SMUR, Hôpital des Cadolles 2000 Neuchâtel.
Vuille
Gérard
G
Kehtari
Réza
R
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D019963:Clinical Chemistry Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004632:Emergency Medical Services; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies