[Development of analysis of drugs and toxic substances that can play an immediate role in emergency medical service: what is to be analyzed?].

Our laboratory was capable of analyzing less than 20 drugs and toxic substances at the time of the establishment of the Center in 1994. Since the poisoning crimes in 1998, such as the curry poisoning with arsenic in Wakayama, the sodium azide poisoning in Niigata, and the potassium cyanide poisoning in Nagano, we have introduced methods for rapid qualitative analysis of arsenic compounds, cyanides and azides, and developed methods for qualitative analysis of three types of surfactants (cationic, anionic, and nonionic) on the basis of the statistics for intoxication patients transferred to the Center. In 1999, the Analysis Method Investigation Committee of the Japanese Society for Clinical Toxicology requested individual medical institutions to analyze 15 selected intoxicating substances, focusing on the following three aspects.

Impact of mobile clinical analyzers on disaster medicine: a lesson from crush syndrome in the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji earthquake.

The Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake caused many people to develop crush syndrome. Analysis of these patients revealed that the severity is not related to their hemodynamics but to hematocrit, base deficits, and potassium concentrations soon after their extrications. In the disaster site, these parameters can only be measured using whole-blood samples by mobile instruments.

[Examination of drugs and poisons in institutions not equipped with an analyzer of them and poisons--focusing on the simple qualitative test of surfactants].

We examined the simple qualitative test of surfactants, and discussed its possible usefulness in clinical emergency medicine and the analysis system in institutions not equipped with an analyzer of drugs and poisons. The procedures for the cobalt thiocyanate ammonium test, methylene blue chloroform test, and bromphenol blue test are easy, if reagents are prepared beforehand. If concomitantly used, these tests enable analysis of ion properties of surfactants.