Dr. Bodson, would you please introduce yourself ? What are your current professional responsibilities?
My duties as an accident and emergency consultant at the teaching hospital of Liege (Belgium), concern mainly the training of young doctors for the SAMU (Emergency Medical Service) as well as an in-house supervision; I am also co-ordinator of a NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) unit. All this has led me to be concerned in particular about patients who are victims of chemical accidents.

What has been your experience concerning chemical lesions during your professional career?
We receive on average 2 cases of standard “chemical” accidents each month, generally domestic in nature but industrial as well (out of a total of 60.000 emergencies per year)

What principal problems does this cause? What are the limits of patient management and the consequences for the patient? In the immediate aftermath of an accident as well as in the evolution of the lesion in both the short and medium term?
The medical staff is often disconcerted when confronted with this type of problem because they tend to seek the specific antidote for the aggressive chemical in question. Precious time is needlessly lost by this research via poison centres and other information sources.
Patients are often very sensitive to pain and the focus is directed towards pain relief by conventional means before thinking of neutralising the cause. With ocular injuries, some medical staff literally fight with the patients to open their eyelids in order to wash the eye with water, which incidentally often proves harmful because it leads to a corneal oedema.
The longer that the corrosive substance remains, the more it destroys and penetrates the tissue.… Moreover, in many cases, washing with water worsens the pain.
In the medium and long term, this is likely to lead to serious after-effects.

“It is necessary to train employees to use a simple procedure for applying  Diphoterine®”

How did you learn about Diphotérine®?
By a rather impressive laboratory demonstration where PREVOR representatives performed an experiment in which a strong acid and then a strong alkaline substance were neutralised with water then with Diphoterine®. After such a demonstration, it is difficult to consider it to be sea water or an unspecified “magic potion”...

What were the specific arguments which led you to think that Diphotérine® could be useful for you in your profession?
It is especially the absence of solutions other than water which led me to test Diphotérine®

How did you obtain the product?
By placing an order with the Belgian representative.

In which type of situation you did your first use Diphoterine®?
A limb splashed with sodium hydroxide.
What were your observations? What conclusions did you draw from this first trial?
It was the pain relief within the first 2 minutes which impressed me first of all; there, the patient was not bluffing, it was real! The total absence of after-effects was as impressive.

Why and how you did you decide to continue using Diphotérine®?
In the absence of other solutions, I do not see why I would give up a product for which I have never observed any side effects and which gives complete satisfaction to the patient.

In which emergency situations and with which results?
In all cases of chemical splashes.
Pain relief is felt by the patient within the first 2 minutes (1 ½ generally).
The are clearly either no after-effects or at the very least significantly less than after washing with water.

Can you conclude regarding:
- the number of observations which have been carried out: more than 200 cases
- strengths of this product: the speed with which it acts, no side effects nor contraindications.
- its weaknesses: is not present enough in the workplace (in order to take action even more quickly)
- possibilities for improvements concerning all aspects of the product: none

If you needed to introduce Diphotérine® to your colleagues, which arguments would you use to convince them of the advantages of
- the concept of an amphoteric and hypertonic solution
- the versatility of this product
-the incorporation of an immediate chemical decontamination integrated into the whole approach to the medical management of an ocular and/or cutaneous chemical lesion?
Well, those exact arguments!

Which new concepts do you think that it is useful to develop for the medical management of chemical emergencies in general?
To train employees to use a simple procedure for applying Diphotérine® as soon as possible after chemical contamination.