A Case of Paraquat Intoxication Caused by Intramuscular Injection

Paraquat intoxication is a fatal problem. Most of paraquat intoxications happen through oral administration. But there is no clinical data for parenteral paraquat intoxication, so we will describe its fatal progression and clinical course. A 52-year-old male injected paraquat solution on his thigh. Initial serum level of paraquat was 42.7 µg/mL and urgent hemoperfusion was performed and his serum level of paraquat was reduced by 5.2 µg/mL. But the patient expired due to respiratory failure and hypoxemia. Different from oral paraquat poisoning, serum level of the drug increases rapidly in intramuscular intoxication. So the paraquat in blood rapidly accumulates in tissue, especially lung parenchyme. We removed his paraquat in blood rapidly, but could not get rid of tissue concentration, so we lost him even with lowered serum paraquat level. Through this case, it is thought that the paraquat intoxication via intramuscular injection can make up a extremely poor prognosis even with very a little amount of paraquat.