Acute mercury poisoning: a case report

BMC Emergency Medicine

Case Report

Ozgur Karcioglu¹  Mustafa Serinken²  Sezgin Sarikaya³  Didem Ay³  Aslı Cetin³  Can Aktas³ 

[1] Dept. of Emergency Medicine, Acibadem Univ, School of Medicine, Istanbul, Turkey;Dept. of Emergency Medicine, Pamukkale University, School of Medicine, Denizli, Turkey;Dept. of Emergency Medicine, Yeditepe Univ, School of Medicine, Istanbul, Turkey;

关键词: Mercury;    Mercury Level;    Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome;    Elemental Mercury;    Mercury Poisoning;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-227X-10-7

 received in 2009-07-16, accepted in 2010-03-19,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundMercury poisoning can occur as a result of occupational hazard or suicide attempt. This article presents a 36-year-old case admitted to emergency department (ED) due to exposure to metallic mercury.Case PresentatıonA 36-year-old woman presented to the ED with a three-day history of abdominal pain, diarrhea and fever. One week ago her daughter had brought mercury in the liquid form from the school. She had put it on the heating stove. One day later, her 14-month old sister baby got fever and died before admission to the hospital. Her blood pressure was 134/87 mmHg; temperature, 40.2°C; heart rate 105 bpm and regular; respiration, 18 bpm; O2 saturation, 96%. Nothing was remarkable on examination and routine laboratory tests. As serine or urinary mercury levels could not be tested in the city, symptomatic chelation treatment with N-acetyl cysteine (NAC) was instituted with regard to presumptive diagnosis and history. At the 7th day of admission she was discharged without any sequelae or complaint. At the discharge day blood was drawn and sent for mercury levels which turned out to be 30 μg/dL (normal range: 0 - 10 μg/dL).ConclusionPublic education on poisoning and the potential hazards of mercury are of vital importance for community health.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Sarikaya et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.