Welcome to emergency medicine cases.com. I'm your host, Dr. Anton Hellman, bringing you Canada's

brightest minds in emergency medicine from EMC Studios in Toronto. In this episode number 27 on

drugs of abuse, we have with us Dr. Margaret Thompson and Dr. Lisa

Thurger. Dr. Thompson is an emergency physician at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto and the

medical director of the Ontario Poison Center at the Hospital for Sick Children.

She's double certified in emergency medicine by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and the American Board of Emergency Medicine. She's double certified in emergency medicine by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons

of Canada and the American Board of Emergency Medicine.

She is also a fellow of the American College of Medical Toxicology.

Dr. Lisa Thurger is an emergency physician at Sunnybrook Health Science Center in Toronto.

She is the Emergency Medicine Undergraduate Coordinator for that site. She completed her residency

training at the University of Toronto, as well as a fellowship in clinical pharmacology. Dr. Thurger is a

clinical toxicologist at the Ontario Poison Center at the Hospital for Sick Children.

Some of the most challenging cases we see in the ED are patients with substance abuse problems.

Use of illicit drugs is widespread in Canada and is not only confined to one geographic location.

It reaches across all socioeconomic and educational boundaries, whether it be the savvy businessman using crack cocaine or the street person using bas salts.

ED utilization by these patients is about 30% greater than patients who don't use drugs,

and often they present with not only a tox problem, but a trauma problem and a psychiatric

problem as well.

This field of illicit drug toxicology is always changing as new ways of getting high or

discovered.

To help us sort through both the common and not so common drugs of abuse,

we have with us to have Canada's leading toxicologist Dr. Margaret Thompson and Dr. Lisa Thurger.

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