Six children under three ingested Ecstasy

In the period 2004-2007 the National Poisons Information centre (NPIC) received 286 enquiries regarding Ecstasy poisoning. Six of these enquiries concerned suspected Ecstasy ingestion in children aged three years or less.
Fourteen of these children were asymptomatic on presentation to the hospital emergency department while two presented with symptoms of moderate toxicity, a report in the Irish Medical Journal said. During the same three year period, there were a number of published case reports of accidental Ecstasy poisoning in young children. In all of these cases, the children presented to hospital with seizures, tachycardia, hypertension, and hyperthermia. All were successfully managed with supportive therapy including cooling and hydration.

Gastric lavage is no longer routinely indicated in the management of poisoning, as the evidence of improved outcome is lacking and its use is associated with increased morbidity e.g. aspiration pneumonia, laryngospasm, mechanical injury, and hypernatraemia following lavage with large volumes of saline.
In the case reported, the authors used gastric lavage although, they did not disclose if any tablets or fragments were recovered. In paediatric cases, the most appropriate gastrointestinal decontamination procedure is activated charcoal, if it can be given within one hour. As seizure activity can occur in children soon after Ecstasy ingestion, gastric decontamination procedures should be undertaken with caution.
Airway protection, seizure-control, correction of metabolic disturbances, and cooling measures are the mainstay of treatment following Ecstasy overdose. Urine toxicology should be considered along with standard biochemistry investigations. The child in this case report never exhibited the signs of severe toxicity (hyperthermia, convulsions) and the authors did not report whether or not he was hypertensive. Confirmatory urine toxicology results were not discussed in the article. This case report poses the question whether the use of gastric decontamination procedures at 1-hour post ingestion, as opposed to supportive therapy alone, resulted in a good outcome.
npicdublin@beaumont.ie