BACKGROUND E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that deliver nicotine and flavorings by aerosol and have been marketed in the United States since 2007. Because e-cigarettes have increased in popularity, toxicity potential from device misuse and malfunction also has increased. National data indicate that during 2010–2014, exposure calls to US poison control centers increased only 0.3% for co...

BACKGROUND Poison control centers (PCCs) hold great potential for saving health care resources particularly by preventing unnecessary medical evaluations. We developed a survey to better identify the needs and experiences of our service community. We hope to use these data to improve PCC outreach education and overall use of our services. METHOD A written questionnaire was developed in Englis...

To the Editor: It was with great interest that we read the paper by Sheikh et al. that attempted to use Poison Control Center (PCC) data to explore the clinical features of self-poisonings with suicidal intent in children. Understanding the features of youth-attempted suicide by poisoning is necessary to effectively identify and treat those patients at highest risk for serious outcomes. The stu...

Family physicians often manage substance ingestions in children, most of which are nontoxic in nature. Physicians should know the phone number of the poison control center, understand the appropriate initial assessment of suspected toxin ingestion, and recognize important toxidromes. Rapid triage is crucial, including airway, respiration, and circulation stabilization. Appropriate supportive or...

CONTEXT Poison control centers (PCCs) and emergency departments (EDs) rely upon telephone communication to collaborate. PCCs and EDs each create electronic records for the same patient during the course of collaboration, but those electronic records are not shared. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to describe the current, telephone based process of PCC-ED communication as the basis for...

Deet is considered to be the best "all around" insect repellent ever developed and is the most widely used insect repellent in the world. Since its first use in a consumer product in 1956, billions of applications have been made to human skin. Information about the safety of deet comes from the human clinical literature, animal toxicology studies, and poison control centers' experiences with de...