Toxic Trauma
A Basic Clinical Guide

This book provides a practical, clinically focused reference guide for medical personnel faced with the management of casualties following exposure to toxic chemical agents. It also gives explanations of the underlying mechanisms that unify the syndromes with which victims present. The management of victims of chemical agent exposure has a parallel with the management of conventional trauma. Systems such as Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) have been developed and are widely taught around the world. Hospital medical personnel are increasingly likely to be required to manage toxic agent exposure that goes beyond the relatively familiar situation of accidental or deliberate ingestion of poisons.
This requires a different systematic approach for management that ensures both a rapid and effective response for the patient and also protection of the responders against the secondary effects of the causative toxic agent.

The pathophysiological effects of toxic agent exposure, with potential entry to the body through a number of pathways such as respiratory system and the skin in addition to ingestion, can potentially affect all the systems of the body and there are many pathophysiological pathways of damage that are convergent with those identified in conventional physical trauma.
The management of toxic trauma links together other specialities concerned with the management of toxic effects on specific body systems, notably respiratory, cardiac, neurological and derma.

This book will appeal to those in training and practice in clinical toxicology, emergency medicine, anaesthesia and critical care.

- Introduction
- The concept of toxic trauma
- Toxic hazards
- An overview of toxic industrial hazards and agents of chemical warfare
- Exposure to toxic hazards
- Hazards and threats
- Clinical presentations of toxic trauma
- Managing toxic trauma
- The vulnerability of civil populations to toxic agent exposure
- The management of mass toxic releases.​