Methanol intoxication: the importance of early clinical and analytical diagnosis and treatment

Abstract

Methanol intoxication is an infrequent condition associated with high morbidity that can cause severe metabolic disturbances, blindness, and important neurological dysfunction potentially life threatening. Therefore, early diagnosis and treatment is required to obtain the best possible result for the patient. Recently, an increase in cases of methanol intoxication has been observed in our environment (50% in the last year) and in our hospital, as in most of them, specific analysis techniques for methanol are not available.

This is why in this article we present four recent clinical cases that occurred in our hospital: to analyze the most relevant information derived from the management of these patients and their clinical and laboratory data. Our objective is to develop a valid strategy in order to facilitate obtaining an early diagnosis sometimes difficult to achieve.

Due to the potential mortality of this poisoning and the existence of treatment, it is important to recognize methanol intoxication immediately. After analyzing the exposed clinical cases, the results indicated that a high index of suspicion and the presence of metabolic acidosis associated with an elevated anion gap and osmol gap and are characteristic findings that allow an early diagnosis.