The Federal Institute for Risk Assessment Human Case Report Database for Poisonings - Standardisation of case reports, improvement and examination for subject - Specific access

Background: The Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) Documentation and Assessment Centre for Poisonings (BfR-Doc Centre) is part of the German toxicological network. German Physicians and Poison Centres (PCs) report human data of poisonings to the BfR. Every case is assessed on the chemical product involved with the distinct formula provided by BfR product database, which contains notifications of the German industry. Data on human poisonings is condensed in a harmonized and standardized data file for analysis. In addition cases of special toxicological and scientific interest (e.g. rare poisonings, high-/low-dose exposures, cases with unexpected clinical course, substances of special interest etc) are prepared for standardized case reports. For better retrieval of human toxicological data a bilingual case report database has been implemented. Methods: The cases are documented in a standardized form (accident/situation of poisoning/age/gender/symptoms/signs/exposure data/clinical course/assessment/remarks), indicated by the substance/product involved and supplemented with important references. After co-checks for correctness, completeness and readability, the German text is translated into English and transferred to the database. In addition, selected case reports from literature were transferred as pdf-files to the same database. Results: Since July 2002 more than 500 cases have been selected, prepared and processed with additional data for case reports. The case reports were written down in uniform documents, provided with keywords and additional information, finally assigned to index words. Starting in 2004, the documents were recorded in a prototype database driven by MS-Access, from 2006 onwards the case record database was transferred to an Informix 9.2 database in web-browser technology. At present, the BfR-case database has been provided with additional staff. The BfR is in consultation with specialists in data protection to ask whether the BfR case record database can to be opened in the future for specialists. Conclusion: In the assessment of poisonings and for e-learning there is a great interest in case reports. The BfR intends in future to offer its case reports on poisoning via its Internet portal for subject-specific access.