Some aspects of contrast medium chemotoxicity.

Intravascular contrast media exhibit a non-specific toxicity on account of their hyperosmolarity and a molecule specific toxicity which has been labelled 'chemotoxicity'. The new generation of low osmolar contrast media has achieved its purpose of greatly reducing the importance of the former and data are presented which demonstrate that all the new media also possess significantly lower chemotoxicity than their conventional predecessors. On most criteria iohexol has the lowest chemotoxicity of any of the available media.