Survey of drug-abuse patterns and toxicology analysis in an emergency-room population

A retrospective survey of 150 patients who presented to a university hospital emergency room with suspected drug abuse was performed. In 74 instances, biological fluids were submitted to the laboratory for toxicology analysis. Drugs implicated in the clinical history were compared with those actually found by the laboratory in order to evaluate the diagnostic utility of toxicology testing. The laboratory found either some or all of the drugs suspected from the history in 68% of the laboratory-analyzed cases. In an additional 16% the laboratory found none of the implicated drugs but did find other drugs not suggested by the history, and in one of every four cases at least one drug not implicated by history was found. The most frequently involved drugs in this study are identified, and epidemiologic parameters including age, sex, frequency of multiple-drug ingestions, patient disposition, and patient and laboratory-sample arrival times are analyzed.