Poison Control can also advise of symptoms to watch out for in borderline cases. My cat walked on partially-dried floor treatment a few months ago. After I told the PC center the name of the material, they were able to tell me that washing said kitty’s paws would most likely suffice, but that if certain symptoms occurred, to take her to an emergency clinic ASAP. (This happened at night, and I didn’t want to wake up the vet unnecessarily.) As it turned out, she was fine.
Iron toxicity is very nasty indeed, and there isn’t much that can be done to remedy it. There is ongoing work into being able to chelate excess iron out of the body but, like all research, who knows how long that kind of stuff can take to actually get something that can go to trials, much less be approved.
Poison control centers know a LOT of stuff.
I used to have a job indexing and writing custom abstracts of biomedical literature. Most of the stuff is pretty dull, so whenever odd case reports or other interesting things came through, we tended to pass them around.
One thing that always got passed around was the annual Toxic Exposure Surveillance System report from the American Association of Poison Control Centers (published annually in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, available in PDF form on the AAPCC website). It’s a lengthy review and statistical analysis of reported toxic exposure cases all over the United States in the previous year, broken out by categories like patient age, fatalities, and type of agent involved (many categories of toxic agent–plants, animals, cleaning chemicals, pesticides, toiletries, prescription drugs, nonprescription drugs…).
An appendix, “Abstracts of Selected Fatal Cases”, in each report has to be read to be believed. Most of it is just incredibly sad–small children blundering into the cleaning supplies (or Uncle Junkie’s methadone supply), suicides swallowing anything and everything within reach. Others are Darwin Award candidates. From this annual survey I learned people will do anything to commit suicide, and people will do anything to get high.
A great many “accidental” poisonings are due to people trying to get high. Another post mentioned jimson weed exposure; I saw a case report of someone who died from smoking the stuff (also known as “loco weed” from the bizarre behavior of cattle poisoned by grazing on it).
Poison control centers are a sort of supplementary brain for physicians and hospitals. They have the time to keep track of the vast array of dangerous products on the market, what plants in a given locale are dangerous, and so on; physicians don’t. And they have the information organized so that they can find it while there is still time to help the patient. They also know if a substance is NOT dangerous, which can be nearly as important.
Consuming paint chips - either by gnawing on raised moulding or by eating the chips directly - that contain lead paint is a common way for children to contract lead poisoning.
Wouldn’t immediate phlebotomy be at least partially beneficial?
I have no idea. I do chemistry, not medicine.
Opiates and Narcan.
Don’t think “antidote”, think drug that opposes the effect of the poison. The idea of the fast acting antidote that quickly confers complete protection from poisoning is pretty much pure hollywood.
There are specific chelating agents and antibodies used for some types of poisoning, and a wide variety of other drugs, but they are used in conjunction with other types of treatment and in some cases have side effects that are sufficently unpleasent that the doctors will consider carefully the patients current condition before administering them.
As has been previously mentioned Naloxone is one of the best examples of a “cinematic” antidote but even it has it’s very real problems. First of all the patient will go into instant total withdrawal, which isn’t likely to be pleasent for anyone concerned, but secondly the effects of the Naloxone wear off quicker than the opioid and as such the patient is likely to keel over dead an hour or so later if not kept under medical supervision (and keeping an agitated drug addict at the hospital can present it’s own set of challenges)
Most cases of poisoning can be treated supportively at hospital until the patient recovers however there are some cases where the patient has or will suffer massive organ damage and there is nothing you can do, paracetamol can do this, but probably the nastiest is paraquat which over a specific dose is a VERY slow and painful death sentence.
Disclaimer on all of the above because it seems to be getting very clinical- I am not a doctor, just a lab type, and I am not even working in the area of toxicology at the moment so this is all dependant on the accuracy of my memory.
As a paramedic I have frequently found the poison control center to be an invaluable tool. If we have any sort of prolonged transport time to the hospital, I’ll contact the poison control center for treatment advice, and then contact the ER physician at the hospital I am transporting to with those recommendations to see if he would like for me to start that treatment. This can range from a fluid bolus to giving any one of the number of drugs that I carry. (activated charcoal, sodium bicarbonate, valium, atropine, calcium, magnesium sulfate, so on and so forth…)
Frequently, a layperson may only get a, “call 911”, answer. Other medical professionals can get valuable treatment information.
I just went to have a look at the AAPCC website.
They have a games page. :eek:
Warning! Terrible Joke Approaches!
If caught outdoors, take shelter in a bar with:
a Priest, a Monk, a Rabbi & a Talking Dog.
I would have thought that anybody with a username like Dr_Paprika would have been an OB/Gyn. 
Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.