Contrary to the literature, vomiting is not a common manifestation associated with plant exposures

A review of clinical toxicology references and the contemporay literature illustrates that vomiting is reported as a nearly universal symptom associatedwith exposure to cultivated and wild plants. However, the literature fails to put thesymptom of vomiting into a clinical perspectivewith regard to its frequency of occurrence. To clarify this issue a retrospective review of plant exposures was conducted. AAPCC TESS 1997-1999 was queried electronicaly to identify and extract all plant ingestion exposures where vomiting was documented as being related to the exposure. All exposures with documented ipecac syrup use were excluded. Data were stratified through the use through the use of a relational database. Plant ingestion exposures accounted for 229,538 reports and vomiting was reported in 5,917 (2.6%) of exposures. Vomiting was attributed as a related symptom in 753 different plants. It was reported once in 323 plants, 1-3 times in 495 plants (65.7%), and < or = 10 times in 657 (87.4%) of all plants in the database. Ten plants accounted for 32.3% of the reports of vomiting Philodendron, Spathiphyllum, Narcissus, Dieffenbachia, Phytolacca, Epipremnum, Euphorbia, Eucalyptus, Ficus, Hedera) and represented 1.3% of the plants associated with vomiting. Even with the most common plant exposures, vomiting is not a frequent adverse event.