Case Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Crit Care Med. Aug 7, 2020; 9(3): 54-62
Published online Aug 7, 2020. doi: 10.5492/wjccm.v9.i3.54
Lessons from a methanol poisoning outbreak in Egypt: Six case reports
Ahmed S Gouda, Amr M Khattab, Bruno Mégarbane
Ahmed S Gouda, National Egyptian Center of Environmental and Toxicological Research, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Cairo 11562, Egypt
Amr M Khattab, Department of Forensic Medicine and clinical Toxicology, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University, Cairo 11562, Egypt
Bruno Mégarbane, Department of Medical and Toxicological Critical Care, Lariboisière Hospital, Paris 75010, France
Author contributions: Gouda AS and Khattab AM managed the patients; Gouda AS and Mégarbane B developed the framework of the paper; Gouda AS wrote the first draft; Mégarbane B worked on subsequent drafts; all authors confirmed the last version before submission, and read and approved the final manuscript.
Informed consent statement: The patients gave their written informed consents.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest.
CARE Checklist (2016) statement: The authors have read the CARE Checklist (2016), and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the CARE Checklist (2016).
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Bruno Mégarbane, MD, PhD, Professor, Department of Medical and Toxicological Critical Care, Lariboisière Hospital, 2 Rue Ambroise Paré, Paris 75010, France. bruno.megarbane@lrb.aphp.fr
Received: April 6, 2020
Peer-review started: April 6, 2020
First decision: June 8, 2020
Revised: June 8, 2020
Accepted: July 19, 2020
Article in press: July 19, 2020
Published online: August 7, 2020
Processing time: 121 Days and 19 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Mass methanol poisoning with unpredictable risk assessment represents a major threat in developing countries. This work reports a clinical series with patients' features and outcome, describes the investigations to identify rapidly the involved causative agent (here, a homemade beverage made with alcoholic disinfectant) and discusses the observed insufficiencies to improve hospital preparedness in case of methanol poisoning outbreak.