About the project
Acute drug poisoning is a common issue in emergency medical services. In recent years, there has been an increasing incidence of poisonings involving gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), a depressant drug that can cause severe intoxications requiring urgent treatment. In the primary care emergency clinic, the diagnosis of the ingested substance is primarily clinical, but the accuracy of the clinical diagnosis of GHB poisoning has not been well investigated with confirmation through blood tests. In Oslo, where most substance poisonings are treated at the primary care emergency clinic, a large proportion of patients with GHB intoxication are still referred to hospitals compared to those with other substances. It is possible that more patients could have been safely treated in the primary care emergency clinic and thus avoided hospital admission. There has been limited detailed examination of the risk of early death among the many patients treated for substance poisoning at the primary care emergency clinic care. Identifying links between the risk of early death and various patterns of poisoning, repetition, and follow-up may provide a better foundation for making follow-up interventions.
Objectives
Sub-project 1 has already been published in Clinical Toxicology.
Sub-projects
- Investigate whether the clinical diagnosis of GHB poisoning is accurate enough by comparing it with confirmed GHB levels in blood samples.
- Identify clinical characteristics to determine which patients with GHB poisoning should be referred to hospital and which can be safely managed at the primary care emergency clinic level.
- Investigate long-term mortality for patients treated for substance poisoning at the emergency care level, as well as identify risk factors for early death.
