Toxicology

Kat Evans shares her perspective on emergency medicine in South Africa in this recording from St Emlyn’s Live 2018. The post offers video and audio versions of her presentation, with links to badEM and related accounts of working and learning in South African emergency departments.

This January 2019 update examines the November 2018 changes to the UK Green Book’s tetanus guidance. Chris Gray discusses wound classification, vaccination and immunoglobulin recommendations, then considers the evidence and unanswered questions behind those changes. It is a historical guideline discussion.

St Emlyn’s reports from the opening day of the joint EuSEM and RCEM conference in Glasgow in 2018. Highlights include toxicology, infectious diseases, analgesia and sedation, pulmonary embolism and human factors, with reflections on diagnostic reasoning and the challenges behind everyday emergency care.

Preparing for Manchester’s 2018 festival season, this article explores the emergency consequences of MDMA and other recreational drugs, including hyperthermia and hyponatraemia. It connects clinical preparedness with harm reduction and the importance of responding to patients without judgement, rather than focusing only on the substances involved.

How does repeated excess paracetamol taken for pain differ from other overdose presentations? This 2017 discussion explores therapeutic excess, risk assessment and the consequences for admission. It repeatedly stresses checking current TOXBASE or local toxicology guidance, rather than relying on the historical thresholds described in the post.

An accessible 2017 introduction to HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis explains why PrEP matters to emergency clinicians and patients. It discusses the evidence available then, sexual-health follow-up and the limits of protection, with access and prescribing details reflecting that period.