Tasty Morsels of EM 013

12 Jul

I keep a little, ever-expanding note on my phone where I jot down little morsels of goodness that I pick up while listening to or reading one of the many excellent sites/podcasts in the useful resource section.

I’ll try and transfer them here for your enlightenment.

Back when the Japanese earthquake happened it got me thinking about management of radiation injury and jotted these notes down from UpToDate.com

  • a lethal dose is that which kills 50% of those exposed to it
  • this is probably about 2Gy
  • looking at chromosomes in leucocytes gives good correlation with exposure (beyond me…)
  • leucocyte depletion kinetics also useful (even further beyond me…)
  • time to emesis is also fairly accurate for dose estimation (ah ha, something useful!)
  • the cutaneous syndrome is lethal in many patients due to inability to heal wounds
  • symptoms within 2 hours of exposure indicate possible lethal dose
  • people who present with the cerebrovascular syndrome will probably die no matter what
  • if they present with gastro syndrome then may survive with medical support but will no doubt go through the haematological syndrome first

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