This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (27)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Toxicologic Verification of 1,008 Emergency Room 'Mentions'

J. Thomas Ungerleider, MD; George D. Lundberg, MD; Irving Sunshine, PhD; Clifford B. Walberg, PhD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1980;37(1):106-109.

Abstract
• One thousand eight emergency room patient records from which reports were contributed to the federal Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) system from the Los Angeles County/ University of Southern California Medical Center in 1977 were studied. The drugs reported to DAWN for these patients were compared with the available toxicology laboratory reports for some of these same patients. The purpose was to test the validity of the data reported to DAWN. Toxicologic analyses had been performed on only 528 patients (52%) of the entire sample. Eighty percent of these tested patients had some positive toxicology result. The DAWN reports were verified in 20% of the tested sample, found to be incorrect in 11% and partially correct or partially incorrect in 69%. Drugs identified toxicologically had varied concentrations, some below or within therapeutic range and some at toxic levels. Thisstudy suggests that the reliability of DAWN reports should be tested prospectively in an unbiased definitive material study.

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Psychiatry, University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine (Dr Ungerleider); the Department of Pathology, University of California, Davis, School of Medicine (Dr Lundberg); the Department of Toxicology, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland (Dr Sunshine); and the Department of Pathology, University of Southern California School of Medicine, Los Angeles (Dr Walberg).

Footnotes
Accepted for publication July 23, 1979.

Reprint requests to UCLA Center for the Health Sciences, Neuropsychiatric Institute, 760 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90024 (Dr Ungerleider).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Drug Prices and Emergency Department Mentions for Cocaine and Heroin
Caulkins
AJPH 2001;91:1446-1448.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Prescription Drug Diversion Control and Medical Practice
Cooper et al.
JAMA 1992;268:1306-1310.
ABSTRACT  

Discrepancies in the Reported Frequency of Cocaine-Related Deaths, United States, 1983 Through 1988
Pollock et al.
JAMA 1991;266:2233-2237.
ABSTRACT