Acute Cyanide Poisoning in Prehospital Care: New Challenges, New Tools for Intervention

2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (S2) ◽  
pp. s40-s48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tee Guidotti

AbstractEffective management of cyanide poisoning from chemical terrorism, inhalation of fire smoke, and other causes constitutes a critical challenge for the pre-hospital care provider. The ability to meet the challenge of managing cyanide poisoning in the prehospital setting may be enhanced by the availability of the cyanide antidote hydroxocobalamin, currently under development for potential introduction in the United States. This paper discusses the causes, recognition, and management of acute cyanide poisoning in the prehospital setting with emphasis on the emerging profile of hydroxocobalamin, an antidote that may have a risk:benefit ratio suitable for empiric, out-of-hospital treatment of the range of causes of cyanide poisoning. If introduced in the US, hydroxocobalamin may enhance the role of the US prehospital responder in providing emergency care in a cyanide incident.

2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (S2) ◽  
pp. s56-s60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark E. Keim

AbstractThe potential for domestic or international terrorism involving cyanide has not diminished and in fact may have increased in recent years. This paper discusses cyanide as a terrorist weapon and the current state of readiness for a cyanide attack in the United States. Many of the factors that render cyanide appealing to terrorists are difficult to modify sufficiently to decrease the probability of a cyanide attack. For example, the relative ease with which cyanide can be used as a weapon without special training, its versatile means of delivery to intended victims, and to a large degree, its ready availability cannot be significantly modified through preparedness efforts. On the other hand, the impact of an attack can be mitigated through preparedness measures designed to minimize the physical, psychological, and social consequences of cyanide exposure. Although the nation remains ill-equipped to manage a cyanide disaster, significant progress is being realized in some aspects of preparedness. Hydroxocobalamin—a cyanide antidote that may be appropriate for use in the prehospital setting for presumptive cases of cyanide poisoning—currently is under development for potential introduction in the US. If it becomes available in the US, hydroxocobalamin could enhance the role of the prehospital emergency responder in providing care to victims of a cyanide disaster. Additional progress is required in the areas of ensuring local and regional availability of antidotal treatment and supportive interventions, educating emergency healthcare providers about cyanide poisoning and its management, and raising public awareness of the potential for a cyanide attack and how to respond.


2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (S2) ◽  
pp. s49-s55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Eckstein ◽  
Paul M. Maniscalco

AbstractThe contribution of smoke inhalation to cyanide-attributed morbidity and mortality arguably surpasses all other sources of acute cyanide poisoning. Research establishes that cyanide exposure is: (1) to be expected in those exposed to smoke in closed-space fires; (2) cyanide poisoning is an important cause of incapacitation and death in smoke-inhalation victims; and (3) that cyanide can act independently of, and perhaps synergistically with, carbon monoxide to cause morbidity and mortality. Effective prehospital management of smoke inhalation-associated cyanide poisoning is inhibited by: (1) a lack of awareness of fire smoke as an important cause of cyanide toxicity; (2) the absence of a rapidly returnable diagnostic test to facilitate its recognition; and (3) in the United States, the current unavailability of a cyanide antidote that can be used empirically with confidence outside of hospitals. Addressing the challenges of the prehospital management of smoke inhalation-associated cyanide poisoning entails: (1) enhancing the awareness of the problem among prehospital responders; (2) improving the ability to recognize cyanide poisoning on the basis of signs and symptoms; and (3) expanding the treatment options that are useful in the prehospital setting.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 797-811 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brianne Suldovsky ◽  
Asheley Landrum ◽  
Natalie Jomini Stroud

In an era where expertise is increasingly critiqued, this study draws from the research on expertise and scientist stereotyping to explore who the public considers to be a scientist in the context of media coverage about climate change and genetically modified organisms. Using survey data from the United States, we find that political ideology and science knowledge affect who the US public believes is a scientist in these domains. Our results suggest important differences in the role of science media attention and science media selection in the publics “scientist” labeling. In addition, we replicate previous work and find that compared to other people who work in science, those with PhDs in Biology and Chemistry are most commonly seen as scientists.


Author(s):  
N. Gegelashvili ◽  
◽  
I. Modnikova ◽  

The article analyzes the US policy towards Ukraine dating back from the time before the reunification of Crimea with Russia and up to Donald Trump coming to power. The spectrum of Washington’s interests towards this country being of particular strategic interest to the United States are disclosed. It should be noted that since the disintegration of the Soviet Union Washington’s interest in this country on the whole has not been very much different from its stand on all post-Soviet states whose significance was defined by the U,S depending on their location on the world map as well as on the value of their natural resources. However, after the reunification of Crimea with Russia Washington’s stand on this country underwent significant changes, causing a radical transformation of the U,S attitude in their Ukrainian policy. During the presidency of Barack Obama the American policy towards Ukraine was carried out rather sluggishly being basically declarative in its nature. When President D. Trump took his office Washington’s policy towards Ukraine became increasingly more offensive and was characterized by a rather proactive stance not only because Ukraine became the principal arena of confrontation between the United States and the Russian Federation, but also because it became a part of the US domestic political context. Therefore, an outcome of the “battle” for Ukraine is currently very important for the United States in order to prove to the world its role of the main helmsman in the context of a diminishing US capability of maintaining their global superiority.


2013 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 815
Author(s):  
Clayton Bangsund

In both the United States and Canada, bankruptcy preferential transfer avoidance provisions are aimed at creating equality of distribution among similarly situated creditors. However, there is a key difference in the way each jurisdiction’s regime treats the notion of intent. An analysis of each regime, using examples, illustrates the way in which Canada’s regime effectually does violence to the distributive equality policy objective, while the US regime adheres to it.


2021 ◽  
pp. 101-126
Author(s):  
Alice Ciulla

Jimmy Carter was elected President of the United States in November 1976. A few months earlier, the Italian elections marked an extraordinary result for the Italian Communist Party (PCI), and some of its members obtained institutional roles. During the electoral campaign, members of Carter's entourage released declarations that seemed to prelude to abandoning the anti-communist veto posed by previous governments. For a year after the inauguration, the US administration maintained an ambiguous position. Nonetheless, on 12 January 1978, the United States reiterated its opposition to any forms of participation of communists in the Italian government. Drawing on a varied set of sources and analysing the role of non-state actors, including think tanks and university centres, this article examines the debate on the Italian "communist question" within the Carter administration and among its advisers. Such discussion will be placed within a wider debate that crossed America's liberal culture.


Author(s):  
Holly M. Mikkelson

This chapter traces the development of the medical interpreting profession in the United States as a case study. It begins with the conception of interpreters as volunteer helpers or dual-role medical professionals who happened to have some knowledge of languages other than English. Then it examines the emergence of training programs for medical interpreters, incipient efforts to impose standards by means of certification tests, the role of government in providing language access in health care, and the beginning of a labor market for paid medical interpreters. The chapter concludes with a description of the current situation of professional medical interpreting in the United States, in terms of training, certification and the labor market, and makes recommendations for further development.


Author(s):  
Julian Germann

This chapter reviews the most prominent explanations of the global rise of neoliberalism provided within critical International Political Economy: (1) a state-centered argument, which holds that neoliberalism was imposed by the United States in a bid to reassert its global dominance; (2) a class-based argument, which sees neoliberalism as the project of globalizing elites who sought to restore their corporate profits and power; and (3) an ideational argument, which describes the rise of neoliberalism as a paradigmatic shift in economic ideas. The chapter argues that these accounts share a common bias: they pivot unduly on the Anglo-American world and are unable to capture the peculiar German contribution to the origins of neoliberalism. As a result, they misread the rise of Germany to the apex of a neoliberal Europe as a belated repetition of the same global movement spearheaded by the US and the UK.


Author(s):  
Sappho Xenakis ◽  
Leonidas K. Cheliotis

There is no shortage of scholarly and other research on the reciprocal relationship that inequality bears to crime, victimisation and contact with the criminal justice system, both in the specific United States context and beyond. Often, however, inequality has been studied in conjunction with only one of the three phenomena at issue, despite the intersections that arguably obtain between them–and, indeed, between their respective connections with inequality itself. There are, moreover, forms of inequality that have received far less attention in pertinent research than their prevalence and broader significance would appear to merit. The purpose of this chapter is dual: first, to identify ways in which inequality’s linkages to crime, victimisation and criminal justice may relate to one another; and second, to highlight the need for a greater focus than has been placed heretofore on the role of institutionalised inequality of access to the political process, particularly as this works to bias criminal justice policy-making towards the preferences of financially motivated state lobbying groups at the expense of disadvantaged racial minorities. In so doing, the chapter singles out for analysis the US case and, more specifically, engages with key extant explanations of the staggering rise in the use of imprisonment in the country since the 1970s.


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