A Case Report of Acute Nicotine Poisoning from Subcutaneous Injection of Nicotine Solution for Electronic Cigarette

Nicotine-poisoning related to the electronic cigarettes (e-cigarette) is increasing worldwide. Moreover, the American Association of Poison Control Centers has advised the public to use caution with e-cigarette devices and highly concentrated liquid nicotine after a surge in related poisonings. We report here the first case of nicotine poisoning from self-injected e-cigarette fluid in Korea. A 17-year-old male patient subcutaneously injected himself with 0.5 ml of nicotine solution for an electronic cigarette via the dorsum of his hand, after which he complained of nausea, vomiting, dizziness and dyspnea. His vital signs were within the normal range, but his mental status was drowsy. He was admitted for observation and the symptoms disappeared the following day. Sinus bradycardia with a rate of 45/min was observed on the third hospital day, but improved after 6 hours. He was discharged without complications.

A bibliometric analysis of research productivity of emergency medicine researchers in South Korea

OBJECTIVE: During the past 20 years, over 1,400 doctors have been certified as emergency physicians in Korea. The number of scientific publications in the field of emergency medicine has also increased. This study aims to evaluate the research productivity of academic emergency physicians in South Korea. METHODS: Articles published from 1996 to 2015 by authors affiliated with Korean emergency departments were retrieved using Pubmed, Embase, and Web of Science. Research productivity was analyzed quantitatively to ascertain the number of articles for publication type and year. The performance of these articles was also analyzed qualitatively using impact factor, citation number, and Hirsch index. Bibliometric analysis was performed by researching Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. RESULTS: A total of 858 articles with 293 Korean authors as the first or corresponding authors were published across 191 journals. The number of publications increased continuously. The most common publication type was original article (n=618), the most commonly studied research topic was resuscitation medicine (n=110), and the average impact factor of the original articles was 2.158. The highest h-index was 17 and, using Web of Science, the maximum number of citations was found to be 85. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that the research productivity of Korean authors in the emergency medicine field has progressed steadily during the last 10 years. However, qualitative indexes, such as the number of citations and h-index value, remain low.