Answering calls from the general public: a necessity for poison centers?

There is great diversity among Poison Centers (PC) concerning the origin of their calls. If some PC answer only calls from hospitals or general practitioners, other like the Lille PC also answer calls from the public. To evaluate the value of this for the general public, we reviewed all the cases of poisoned children hospitalized at the Lille University Hospital during a 3-month period. All had not previously called the PC for advice. In the 80 relevant cases, the advice of the PC physicians would have been no treatment in 20 cases (25%), a call to a general practitioner in 13 cases (16%), and hospitalization in 47 cases (59%). A great homogeneity existed among the PC physicians' answers, with only 2 discrepancies in the no-hospitalization group. Analysis of data showed that there were significantly more symptomatic intoxications in the hospitalization group than in the no-hospitalization group. No patient who would have been advised not to be hospitalized presented any life threatening or severe symptoms during their hospital stay. We conclude that answering the calls from the general public is feasible and that the advice of a trained PC physician is practical and appropriate. We calculate that in answering calls from the general public the Lille PC saved 4,760,295 FF (US $761,650) in 1987.