Clearance models to assess the efficacy of procedures enhancing drug removal in self poisoning

Despite the success of the Scandinavian system of passive intensive therapy, deaths from self-poisoning continue to present a major problem in health care because of the large numbers of admissions. For this reason, there is still interest in procedures designed to enhance drug elimination as a possible tool in treatment of overdose. This paper discusses the problems of assessing the efficacy of such procedures and describes a simple clearance model which can be used with experimental animals to measure how effectively the proposed technique aids removal of drug from plasma. Successful methods can then be used in clinical trials to measure how effective they are in reducing mortality and morbidity in self-poisoning.