Decontamination in the ECC

Course Details

The world of toxicity is filled with highs and lows, but in order to limit the roller-coaster of indiscriminate ingestions, timely and appropriate decontamination is a must. Toxic ingestions require a complete understanding of the who (in other words the patient; including signalment, concurrent disease, medications/supplements, and current patient status), the what (poison it is; including substance name, co-ingestions, dose ingested, time of ingestion), and the when (did we evaluate ABCD’s of triage, what time was the toxin ingested and what time/techniques have been attempted for decontamination). For this lecture we will focus on the where (in the GIT do we target decontamination) and why we do what we do.