This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Matthew V. Rudorfer, MD
Washington University School of Medicine St Louis

JAMA. 1981;245(7):703-704.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

In his editorial on laboratory testing, Samuel Vaisrub, MD (1980;244:592), cogently weighs the positive and negative aspects of routine lidocaine serum concentration measurement in a coronary care unit (CCU) setting. However, I take issue with his related comments on assay of tricyclic antidepressant (TAD) plasma levels after overdose. As his sole reference, Vaisrub cites a study¹ in which no correlation was found between TAD plasma levels and several clinical manifestations in eight patients during the first 24 hours after TAD overdose. The major limitation of that study is the relative mildness of the overdoses followed. Only one patient had development of potentially life-threatening respiratory and cardiac sequelae, with maximum total TAD level observed at any time in any subject of 740 ng/mL.

Thus, it is not surprising that the negative findings of this report stand in stark contrast to those of Petit et al,² who noted . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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