Poisoning documentation and reporting in Germany

Abstract

Reports on adverse effects of chemical substances and mixtures (poisonings in the broader sense) are of great importance both for the improvement of medical care as well as for substance and product safety and for medical education and training. Case reports are the basis of toxicovigilance, i.e. the detection and assessment of poisoning risks in a community arising from clinical cases. Reports on poisonings are created mainly by medical doctors, but also by toxicologically trained nurses and non-medical scientists of poison centres and toxicology labs. In this article, basic terms of clinical toxicology are explained and the important roles of reporting on poisoning are described. Standards for poisoning reporting are partly developed. Reports differ in structure, information content and the degree of assignment of evaluation categories (administrative, clinical, product safety, e.g. agent group, degree of poisoning severity, causality). Methodologically, a distinction is made between detailed individual case reports and aggregated case series with little clinical information. As a result, case reports have recently been used to describe novel intoxications (e.g. new psychoactive substances [NPSs]). Case series facilitated the detection of poisoning outbreaks (sealant spray, ciguatera fish poisoning) and novel products with increased risk of poisoning (e.g. liquid laundry detergent capsules). Systematic toxicovigilance at the national level in Germany will be considerably improved by a national register of poisoning planned at German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR). For a European toxicovigilance scheme, the recently developed EuPCS product category system forms an important basis.