Clinical toxicology literature: where is it?

Acquiring and continuously updating current literature from medical journals for a poison information center's (PIC) reference file is an essential, but difficult and expensive, task. Due to budgetary concerns and limited space, it is not feasible to purchase and store a large number of periodicals at a PIC. To determine, for acquisition purposes, which journals provide the largest number of clinical toxicology manuscripts, an extensive review of non-toxicology journals specializing in emergency medicine, pediatrics, pharmacology, and general medicine was conducted. Twelve issues of each journal were evaluated to identify citations pertaining to clinical toxicology (original research, reviews, case reports, letters, abstracts, editorials). One hundred seventy-four citations were identified. Emergency medicine journals accounted for 63% of the clinical toxicology citations, general medicine 18%, pediatrics 12%, pharmacology 5%, and miscellaneous 2%. Review articles and case reports comprised the majority of citations followed by original research, and letters to the editor. Forty percent of the citations were in Annals of Emergency Medicine, 22% in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, and 7% in the American Journal of Medicine. Only a limited number of non-toxicology medical journals have a sufficient number of clinical toxicology citations in them to justify their purchase for a PIC.