Loading...
Acetaminophen overdose is one of the few overdose situations in which a specific antidote (acetylcysteine) improves clinical outcome. Acetylcysteine is clearly beneficial when given in the first 10 to 15 hours after the overdose, but benefits appear to diminish with longer delays.
To determine whether delayed treatment modifies the clinical course in seriously ill patients, these authors retrospectively reviewed 98 cases of acetaminophen-induced fulminant hepatic failure: 57 patients received no acetylcysteine, and 41 received the drug intravenously more than 10 hours after the overdose (median, 17 hours; range, 10 to 36). The two groups were similar in age, sex, amount of acetaminophen ingested, and interval between the overdose and present…