Utilization of Point of Care (POC) Test: Blood Gas in Diagnosing Aspirin Overdose: A Case Report

Aspirin overdose is not very common in India, but it is still challenging to Emergency Physicians to diagnose, when presented to Emergency Room due to lack of qualitative/quantitative measures in many hospitals. Careful interpretation of history, clinical examination and use of Point of Care (POC) testing like Blood Gas analysis helps in diagnosing an Aspirin overdose. Hereby presenting a case where blood gas interpretation helped in diagnoses of a case of Aspirin overdose. A young lady presented with history of consumption of multiple unknown tablets, totally amounting to 60 in number about 20 hours before presentation to ER. On further history patient revealed that she had also taken 5 tablets of Paracetamol (650mg) amongst them. Patient was anxious, febrile, had nausea, epigastric pain, headache. This couldnt be correlated with paracetamol overdose alone. On investigating further, ABG showed primary respiratory alkalosis, primary metabolic acidosis, and hyperchloremic acidosis. Going with clinical history, signs, symptoms and ABG findings we made a provisional diagnosis of Aspirin over dose. Getting a detailed history and interpretation of the point of care investigations appropriately, will help in diagnosis and decreasing mortality and morbidity.