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Poisons

Survey of availability of toxocological analyses in clinical biochemistry laboratories in Scotland.

Introduction

Laboratory analyses are an important part of the management of patients with potentially serious poisoning. The National Poisons Information Service (NPIS) provides advice to medical staff who are managing poisoned patients. This advice may include recommendations for particular analytes to be measured. There is anecdotal evidence that there may be a mismatch between the advice given by the NPIS and the ability of clinical biochemistry departments to provide these tests, particularly out of hours.

This survey was performed to investigate the availability of toxicological investigations from clinical biochemistry departments. It was also of interest to attempt to establish numbers of requests for the analytes of interest, particularly those requested infrequently. The questionnaire also asked for information on the units used to report drugs and toxicological investigations as this is another area of concern to the NPIS.

Coincidentally, at the same time as this survey was being done, a joint working party was set up nationally between the ACB and the NPIS to consider the range of assays which should be available for the management of poisoned patients and to define, where possible, the circumstances under which each of these should be used. The working party has produced a joint position paper with recommended turnaround times for a number of analyses. The information derived from this survey has been assessed against these guidelines.

Download the full survey as:

Microsoft Word®
document
(.doc, 44k)

Further information from:

Dr Anne Pollock - Regional Audit Representative
email: Anne.Pollock@haht.scot.nhs.uk