JIST

Abstract

Cyanide toxicity is considered to be a rare form of poisoning. Intentional poisoning with cyanide is a rarely encountered event. However, unintentional poisoning of cyanide exposure occurs relatively frequently in patients with smoke inhalation from residential or industrial fires. Intentional poisoning with cyanide is usually almost fatal because of the early onset; high fatality rate; and physical and pharmaco­logical properties of the cyanide. Unavailability of proper confirmatory tests makes the task even more tedious. Here in this article case series of cyanide poisoning is presented wherein out of 5 cases 3 have survived because of early diagnosis by screening tests and is aimed at highlighting few properties of cyanide poisoning, screening tests which could possibly reduce the fatality rate to a great extent and the role of Poison detection centre (PDC) in reducing the mortality rate.