Acute yellow oleander (Thevetia peruviana) poisoning: cardiac arrhythmias, electrolyte disturbances, and serum cardiac glycoside concentrations on presentation to hospital.

Objective: To describe the cardiac arrhythmias, electrolyte disturbances, and serum cardiac glycoside levels seen in patients presenting to hospital with acute yellow oleander (Thevetia peruviana) poisoning and to compare these with published reports of digitalis poisoning.

Design: Case series.

Setting: Medical wards of Anuradhapura District General Hospital, Sri Lanka, and coronary care unit of the Institute of Cardiology, National Hospital of Sri Lanka, Colombo, the national tertiary referral centre for cardiology.

Epidemic of self-poisoning with seeds of the yellow oleander tree (Thevetia peruviana) in northern Sri Lanka.

Deliberate self-harm is an important problem in the developing world. Ingestion of yellow oleander seeds (Thevetia peruviana) has recently become a popular method of self-harm in northern Sri Lanka -- there are now thousands of cases each year. These seeds contain cardiac glycosides that cause vomiting, dizziness, and cardiac dysrhythmias such as conduction block affecting the sinus and AV nodes.