What is the definition of a poisoning?
New insights in medicine and acceptable treatments necessitates an adjustment of the existing definition of clinical or forensic poisoning to: 'An individual's medical or social unacceptable condition as a consequence of being under influence of an exogenous substance in a dose too high for the person concerned'. For medical and legal purposes it is important to know how the victim became poisoned. In general, there are three ways of causing medical poisoning: accidental poisoning, including iatrogenic poisoning, experimental and intentional poisoning. Nowadays iatrogenic intoxication, poisoning caused by the Münchhausen's syndrome (by proxy) and experimental poisoning (designer drugs) have a major place in contemporary toxicology. Although some toxicologists use the word 'intoxication' only overdoses with central effects, in this article 'intoxication' and 'poisoning' are considered to be synonymous.
Laboratory for Clinical and Forensic Toxicology and Drug Analysis, Department of Pharmacy and Toxicology, University and University Hospital Groningen, The Netherlands.
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