Citation

Manini AF, Hoffman RS. Basic Clin. Pharmacol. Toxicol. 2013; 114(3): 223-224.

Affiliation

Division of Medical Toxicology, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Elmhurst Hospital Center, New York, NY, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Nordic Pharmacological Society, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/bcpt.12187

PMID

24373341

Abstract

We read with interest the article by Maignan and colleagues(1) regarding predictive factors for ICU admission in poisoned patients. Deliberate drug poisoning (DDP) is indeed a significant public health threat, particularly considering the current prescription drug overdose epidemic in the United States.(2) To their credit, the authors acknowledge the limitations of their dataset with regard to "toxicological anamnesis" as well as the issue of generalizability to other regions that do not routinely practice direct ICU admission that bypass the ED. However, we feel some aspects of the methodology deserve some comments with regard to the interpretation of their final model, particularly on the use of Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) as a predictor and ICU admission as the endpoint in the study. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Language: en