Be wary of Paracetamol

Paracetamol is an analgesic, antipyretic, little side effect, effective and quite safe. However, if you take an overdose or consider it as an antidote to alcohol, it will hurt many parts of your body, even leading to death.

Paracetamol poisoning is no longer a rarity

The flu is a disease of the times. Just by seeing the whole body aches, discomfort, fever, headache ., many people immediately take the medicine to stop it. In fact, they do not know that flu drugs (the main ingredient is Paracetamol) are harmful to the body, even leading to death. That is the opinion of Dr. Pham Due, Deputy Director of Center for Anti-Poisoning Center Bach Mai Hospital.

From 2002 onwards, the poisoning caused by colds almost never existed. Only a few years ago, the number of people hospitalized for Paracetamol poisoning has increased dramatically, ranking second after poisoning sleeping pills and tranquilizers.

Many poisoning cases fall into children

The cause of child poisoning is often because parents arbitrarily use many drugs with different names (actually also Paracetamol line) leading to overdose consequences or impatiently lower fever but " close eyes " for use More drugs directed. Sometimes, parents give the right dose but do not know that the child may be weak, liver function is problematic (in this case, the dose must be reduced), leading to the poisoning of the child.

Poisoning due to lack of understanding

(Photo: Drugscope)

Paracetamol is an analgesic, antipyretic that is considered quite safe. However, the increase in poisoning is also due to Paracetamol being sold widely, patients can buy on their own without a doctor. In most flu medications, there is the main active ingredient, Paracetamol, if taken at the same time, it causes overdose. For example, if someone who took a sufficient dose of Decolgen did not get better and took another " stronger " flu medicine like Tiffy, for example, it would lead to Paracetamol overdose. If the patient has latent liver disease (cirrhosis or chronic hepatitis .), abuse of Paracetamol will increase the risk of toxicity.

Alcohol + Paracetamol = Liver necrosis

Dr Due said that there are no studies that suggest that paracetamol can " solve alcohol ". When drinking a lot of alcohol, the body feels euphoric, artificially refreshing, but if taken excessively, the body will become tired and dull. Paracetamol has a central inhibitory effect on the nerves, which makes the drinker feel dizzy at that time. But alcohol is inherently toxic to the liver, and if Paracetamol is used, the body will suffer from two types of toxins at the same time, increasing the burden on the liver many times.

The phenomenon of liver poisoning

The phenomenon of poisoning often has no frantic symptoms in the early stages. After taking the medicine for several hours, the drug users felt nausea, vomiting, anorexia, and fatigue. Within 18-72 hours, abdominal pain may be accompanied by enlarged liver, palpable liver. Hepatic impairment will progress heavily during the period from the 3rd to the 6th day. Symptoms include jaundice, coma, increased intracranial pressure, scattered intravascular coagulation, bleeding, hypoglycemia, impairment kidney and death. Most patients with severe hepatic impairment (hepatic coma) lead to death.

The doctor advised

- Do not use Paracetamol for self-treatment of fever for more than 5 days in children (adults not more than 10 days), unless instructed by a doctor. People with liver disease, malnutrition, alcoholism, those who are dehydrated (due to prolonged high fever), who are taking anticonvulsants (epilepsy treatment) must be cautious and only use them when having doctor's prescription.

- The usual dose of fever reduction for children is 10-15mg / kg of weight, 3-4 times a day, and the maximum dose for children not exceeding 60mg / kg / day. Adults take 500-1000mg at a time, drink 3 times a day, should not exceed 3g in the day. Particularly for the elderly, the dose should be lower due to poor liver function.

- Absolutely do not drink alcohol when taking medicine and taking many flu drugs at the same time. When there are manifestations of poisoning, by all means must cause nausea, give Antipois B.Mai detoxifying activated carbon and take immediately to the emergency hospital, detoxify with N-acetylcysteine.