Digoxin abortion gone awry….or did it?

Emergency medicine has to be one of the most diverse fields of medicine out there. Each day is a whirlwind of activity and patients, ranging from cardiac arrests down to the broken fingernail. Not only are we responsible for the most critically ill, the walking wounded and the patients that have nowhere else to go, but also are faced with the complications encountered in the outpatient setting. This could be a patient fresh from the chiropractor that is having neck pain, can’t move their arm and now have a carotid dissection; or a patient from a outpatient surgi-center that had local anesthesia but is now seizing; or in the case below a patient that underwent an elective abortion and now is hypotensive and bradycardic.

Tox Box Journal Club

In this installment of the Tox Box Journal Club we are going over three articles reviewed at the NYC Poison Control Center in Manhattan last week. Two of the articles discuss utility of lipid emulsion therapy in animal models and a third on the deleterious effects of methotrexate dosing errors in Australia.

Octreotide for sulfonylurea poisoning

Newer second generation sulfonylureas are used extensively for treating type-2 diabetes mellitus (i.e. glyburide, glipizide, glimepiride and gliclazide). They are rapidly absorbed and reach peak plasma concentration typically within 2-4 hours; and have a duration of action up to 24 hours long. In 2010, the American Association of Poison Control centers reported nearly 4,000 cases …