Klóraleitranir

• Main Authors: Jakob Kristinsson, Þorkell Jóhannesson, Hildigunnur Hlíðar
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Icelandic
• Published: Læknafélag Íslands, Læknafélag Reykjavíkur 2010
• Subjects: Eitranir; Svefnlyf; Chloral Hydrate; Overdose; Poisoning; Smella; Iceland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2336/99425

Neðst á síðunni er hægt að nálgast greinina í heild sinni með því að smella á hlekkinn Skoða/Opna(view/open) During the period 1978-1987 altogether 11 cases of fatal poisonings involving chloral were subjected to forensic toxicological analysis in the Department of Pharmacology, University of Iceland. The results are shown in the table. The concentrations of trichloroethanol (the active metabolite of chloral) were on an average highest in the liver and then in brain, urine and blood in that order. The individual results, however, varied within a wide range in all tissues. Only two of these poisonings were caused by chloral alone (cases no. 8 and 9). In the nine remaining cases other drugs had also been ingested (the table last column). These drugs were considered contributory causes of death in at least six cases (no. 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 and 11) and might have been the most important causes of death in two cases (no. 5 and 11). In spite of the fact that chloral is little used as a hypnotic in Iceland, fatal poisonings by the drug are relatively common. Thus they accounted for 25% of all cases of fatal poisonings by hypnotic drugs and 9% of all cases of fatal drug poisonings in the aforementioned period. From this data it is concluded that the use of chloral is largely unjustified as it has relatively small therapeutic index and could easily be replaced by safer hypnotic drugs. The only real exception beeing the treatment of insomnia in the elderly where impaired microsomal oxidation of the benzodiazepines could justify the use of the drug. Á 10 ára tímabilinu 1978-1987 mátti rekja 11 dauðsföll hér á landi að hluta eða öllu leyti til klóraleitrunar. Málum þessum var vísaö til réttarefnafræðilegra rannsókna í Rannsóknastofu í lyfjafræði. Greint er frá niðurstöðum þessara rannsókna og lýst er aðferð til ákvörðunar á þríklóretanóli í líkamssýnum.