Emergency toxicology in hospitals

Toxicological investigations in hospital are carried out in an emergency situation to identify the toxicant(s) and, if necessary, to measure them. They must take into account clinical, pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic data when carrying out analyses, interpreting results and reporting them.

In hospitals, they are mainly aimed at identifying potentially toxic drugs (antidepressants, neuroleptics, hypnotics, anxiolytics, analgesics, antimalarials, etc.) in the event of attempted autolysis or accidental intake by children.

Their physico-chemical spectrum is highly variable, as they are acidic, neutral or weak base molecules, lipophilic or hydrophilic, with relative masses ranging from 100 to 500 daltons. The difficulty of these analyses lies not only in the fact that the physico-chemical behavior of these drugs is relatively homogeneous...