ABSTRACT
Gastric lavage after ingestion of excessive amounts of a drug/poison--yes or no? If yes, at what time intervals from ingestion? On one side stand some authors who emphasize the complications, contraindications, and low yield of this procedure. These authors recommended that gastric lavage should be performed only within 30-60 minutes after ingestion of toxic doses of a drug/poison. Later lavage usually has no clinical benefit. On the other side stand some other authors who recommend gastric lavage in patients as late as 6 hours after intoxication. In some cases, when the ingested substance slows gastric emptying, they even recommend lavage until 24 hours after intoxication. Based on our experience, it is necessary to support strongly the second group of the authors and recommend the extension of the time interval when to perform gastric lavage in intoxication.
Subject(s)
Drug Overdose/therapy , Gastric Lavage/methods , Gastric Lavage/standards , Practice Guidelines as Topic , HumansABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To describe histological and ultrastructural changes of cardiomyocytes in experimental rats following subplantar administration of carrageenin. MATERIAL AND METHODS: In adult rats, an acute inflammatory reaction was induced by subplantar injection of 0.1 ml of 1% sterile carrageenin solution. In a total of 10 rats, which developed gangrene of tails in 5- to 12-cm-long segments, were killed and their internal organs fixed in 10% formaldehyde solution and subsequently processed for paraffin embedding. Later, blocks of the ventricular heart tissue were refixed and reprocessed for Araldite embedding and ultrastructure observation. Similarly, the cardiac muscle of control, carrageenin-injected rats which did not develop vascular thrombosis was processed. RESULTS: The cardiomyocytes of rats injected with carrageenin showed focal dystrophic alterations, enlarged mitochondria with densely packed concentrically oriented cristae, and many dense and irregularly shaped deposits with microgranular helicoid organization. Normal cardiomyocytes were observed in control rats. Complicating thrombosis of tail blood vessels leading to extensive tail necroses were also histologically confirmed. CONCLUSION: These findings demonstrate specific pathogenic effect in the cardiovascular system of the carrageenin-treated rats.
Subject(s)
Carrageenan/administration & dosage , Myocytes, Cardiac/ultrastructure , Thrombosis/pathology , Animals , Carrageenan/adverse effects , Disease Models, Animal , Female , Myocytes, Cardiac/drug effects , Necrosis , Rats , Rats, Wistar , Tail/pathology , Tail/physiology , Thrombosis/chemically inducedABSTRACT
Emil Starkenstein (1884-1942), professor of pharmacology at the German Medical Faculty of Charles University in Prague, was not only an experimental pharmacologist, but also the pioneer of clinical pharmacology. During the World War I (1914-1918) he took advantage of his knowledge of experimental pharmacology for the new approaches to the treatment of bacillary dysentery, cholera and of epidemic typhus fever. In 1918 he published the article "Clinical Pharmacology--Theory and Praxis at the Patient's Bedside", in which he defined the main task of clinical pharmacology as the implementation and verification of experimental pharmacology achievements in clinical therapy. During the period 1921-1933, his scientific interests involved namely analgesic combinations, seasickness therapy and pharmacology of iron. He published more than 240 scientific articles and three textbooks. Emil Starkenstein died on November 6, 1942 as a victim of Holocaust. Starkenstein s collection of more than 20,000 reprints of scientific studies, which has been deposited recently in the Archives of Charles University in Prague is very valuable.
