Serie de cas d'intoxication aux champignons dans le departement du Lot durant l'ete 2011. Etude descriptive/Mushroom intoxications in the Lot department during summer 2011. Descriptive study

A retrospective case study was performed to describe the population presenting gastrointestinal mushroom syndrome regarding patients admitted by the emergency services in Lot (a department in the southwest of France) during summer 2011. The study was conducted on 58 patients over 7 days. The significant data for the study were collected from the patients' medical files. The authors gathered data from the medical examination, patients' symptomatology, data from the clinical examination and biological tests. The length of the hospital stay and the patients' clinical evolution, when hospitalization was needed, were also used. The average patient age is 45.6 with a sex ratio of 0.93. Few comorbidities are observed (among the patients, 1.8% present a history of cardiovascular disease or diabetes, 3.6% show polypathology). Emergency alerts in the case of meteorological conditions favorable to dangerous mushrooms should reduce the incidence of mushroom intoxications and prevent an influx of emergency admissions to hospitals.