WNPU Attends North American Congress of Clinical Toxicology, San Francisco, USA, September 2022.

Representatives from the Welsh National Poisons Unit recently attended the North American Congress of Clinical Toxicology in San Francisco, 14-18 September 2022. The congress had a good attendance of several hundred delegates from around the world, including from Australia, Austria, Canada, Mexico, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

The National Poisons Information Service (NPIS) was able to present three posters focused on poisons enquires regarding insulin, fatal propranolol overdoses, and a major incident early warning system developed by NPIS; all posters were well received and attracted considerable interest from delegates.

The conference included a broad range of highly relevant presentations including pre-conference symposia on cardiovascular toxicity and the legal and forensic toxicology aspects of murder by poisoning. There was an interesting keynote lecture on scorpion envenomation and a number of other interesting presentations, including on the differences in poison centre operations, the role of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) in managing cases of poisoning, and an overview of the occurrence of Havana Syndrome. Other highlights of the conference programme included sessions on:

· Herbs and dietary supplements

· Envenomations

· Increased cannabinoid exposures in paediatric patients, and

· Poison Centre Best Practice

The conference provide a valuable opportunity for all NPIS delegates to develop further their knowledge in clinical toxicology, interact and network with a wide range of colleagues from around the world, and share and learn from the experience of other poisons centres in different countries.

The conference has equipped staff further to handle the broad variety of poisons enquiries received by the Welsh National Poisons Unit, and provided several ideas for how the service can be further enhanced further for the benefit of enquirers.

A full list of abstracts are published in the journal Clinical Toxicology and are available here.