Toxicology screening in paediatrics

© 2015 Asociación Española de Pediatría The prevalence of acute or chronic exposure to substances of abuse in paediatric patients, from the neonatal period to adolescence, is not well established as most cases go unnoticed. Regardless of clinical cases of acute poisoning leading to visits to emergency room, the exposure is usually detected by a questionnaire to the parents or children. In the last few years, new validated analytical methodologies have been developed in order to detect parent drugs and their metabolites in different biological matrices. These biological matrices have different time windows for detection of the exposure: acute (i.e., urine, blood, oral fluid), and chronic (i.e., hair, meconium or teeth). The aim of this paper was to review the scenarios where the use of biological matrices is indicated for the detection of acute or chronic exposure to substances of abuse.