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The preferred antidote is fomepizole, with ethanol used if this is not available. Hemodialysis may also be used in those where there is organ damage or a high degree of acidosis. Other treatments may include sodium bicarbonate, folate, and thiamine. [2] Outbreaks of methanol ingestion have occurred due to contamination of drinking alcohol.
Acute alcohol poisoning is a medical emergency due to the risk of death from respiratory depression or aspiration of vomit if vomiting occurs while the person is unresponsive. Emergency treatment strives to stabilize and maintain an open airway and sufficient breathing while waiting for the alcohol to metabolize.
Signs of ethylene glycol poisoning depend upon the time after ingestion. [6] Symptoms usually follow a three-step progression, although poisoned individuals will not always develop each stage. [7] [8] Stage 1 (30 minutes to 12 hours) consists of neurological and gastrointestinal symptoms and looks similar to alcohol poisoning. [9]
Fomepizole is used to treat ethylene glycol and methanol poisoning. It acts to inhibit the breakdown of these toxins into their active toxic metabolites. Fomepizole is a competitive inhibitor of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase, [6] found in the liver. This enzyme plays a key role in the metabolism of ethylene glycol, and of methanol.
After several recent fentanyl-related overdoses, including the death of a 15-year-old girl, the Los Angeles Unified School District is providing all of its schools with a medication that can ...
It is very rare for a victim of an overdose to have consumed just one drug. Most overdoses occur when drugs are ingested in combination with alcohol. [32] Drug overdose was the leading cause of injury death in 2013. Among people 25 to 64 years old, drug overdose caused more deaths than motor vehicle traffic crashes.
Early doctors recognized that ethanol was a risky anesthetic because it could lead to death from alcohol poisoning or vomit inhalation (pulmonary aspiration). This led to use of alternatives in antiquity, such as opium and cannabis , and later diethyl ether starting in the 1840s. [ 34 ]
The CDC reported recently that heroin-related overdose deaths jumped 39 percent nationwide between 2012 and 2013, surging to 8,257. In the past decade, Arizona’s heroin deaths rose by more than 90 percent. New York City had 420 heroin overdose deaths in 2013 — the most in a decade.