An analysis of reports concerning overdose evaluated by abdominal computed tomography

Abstract

Recently, there have been a number of reports concerning the utility of abdominal computed tomography (CT) for diagnosing overdose (OD). We herein report the summary and results of an analysis of these reports to assess the significance of CT for patients with OD. Searches of Ichushi (Japana Centra Revuo Medicine) and PubMed were carried out to identify articles from 1983 to 2019 using the key words “poisoning” and “abdominal computed tomography”. Forty‐eight cases across 15 articles were defined as subjects in this report. The average age of subjects was 46 years old, and there were 28 women. Forty‐five of the 48 subjects (93.8%) had positive findings of residual drugs on CT. The finding of a high‐density fluid level in the stomach was the most frequent (60.4%), followed by ill‐defined high‐density material in the stomach (12.5%) and high‐density tablets in the stomach (10.4%). One prospective study suggested the merits of decontamination for patients with positive findings on CT even if more than 60 min had elapsed since the ingestion of drugs. Computed tomography could aid in the diagnosis of OD in comatose patients who cannot talk or who present without any other evidence of OD. In addition, a recent study revealed the merits of decontamination for patients with positive findings on the CT even if more than 60 min had elapsed since the ingestion of drugs.

Keywords

• Computed tomography
• decontamination
• overdose