10 Toxicity Hacks for Your Veterinary Practice
We all need ways to make life a little easier, and here are 10 tips and tricks we hope will help when that next toxicity case walks through your doors.
1) Make sure your cupboard is always stocked with these go-to treatments:
- Aacepromazine
- Propranolol
- Diazepam (or midazolam)
- Apomorphine
- Activated charcoal
- Naloxone
- Lipid emulsion
- Antiemetic
2) Drug screens make for quick calculations: Keep a few urine drug screens around at all times, or at least have a source where you can get them quickly. They can help you figure out if your patient got into her owner’s drug stash or not. Just keep in mind that THC may be falsely negative since dogs produce different urinary metabolites from THC than people do.
3) Charcoal reference: Bookmark this flow chart so you know exactly when to give activated charcoal.
4) Stop spinning your wheels: Get the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center’s free bromethalin wheel and download our app for a chocolate wheel.
5) Become an amateur botanist: Simply knowing the different types of lilies can help you tremendously. Polish your plant knowledge (or just keep this bookmarked).
6) Ease with ice cream: Keep vanilla ice cream in your freezer or freeze some lowfat milk in ice cube trays. That frozen treat can help with insoluble calcium oxalates, oral paresthesia or for dilution for a corrosive substance.
7) Cover your bases with juice: Along with the ice cream trick, you can keep sports drinks or apple juice in your clinic for diluting oral n-acetylcysteine.
8) Be mindful with Vitamin K: Remember that injectable Vitamin K may be used orally to treat anticoagulant rodenticide exposures, especially for patients who are too small for the tablets.
9) Activated charcoal tip: You can mix activated charcoal with canned food to make administration easier.
10) Easy cleanup: Put a garbage bag in a kitty litter pan to catch the vomit when inducing emesis.
We have lots more on this subject: