Overview

Paracetamol is a common type of pain medicine that is usually safe. If you take more than the recommended amount (an overdose), it can harm your liver and sometimes your kidneys.

The medical team will assess you. Based on the information that you give them and the results of your blood tests, they will decide if you need treatment to reduce the chance of damage to your liver. Not everyone will need treatment.

Having acetylcysteine treatment

The treatment is a medicine called acetylcysteine. It is given as 2 infusions, which take about 12 hours. We give you the medicine through a thin, plastic tube into a vein in your arm. This is called a drip or intravenous (IV) infusion.

This treatment might cause mild side effects, such as itching, and feeling or being sick (nausea or vomiting).

Making sure you are not at risk

Checking your blood

If you have acetylcysteine treatment, we will check your blood afterwards to see if there has been any damage to your liver.

If your blood tests after a paracetamol overdose were normal, you are at a very low risk of damage to your liver from this overdose.

If the blood tests were abnormal, there may be a small chance of getting liver damage, or existing damage getting worse, if you take paracetamol too soon. We will talk to you about the results and you might need more treatment.

Your doctor or nurse will tell you how long you need to avoid taking paracetamol. If you have any questions about this, please ask a doctor or nurse before you leave the hospital.

Leaving hospital

It is only safe for you to leave hospital when your blood tests show that you are not at risk of liver problems.

It's important that you give us accurate information about the tablets that you took. We use this information to assess you and your risk of liver damage.

Are you certain:

• when you took the tablets?
• how many tablets you took?
• if you took the tablets all together or over more than an hour?

If you forget to give us this information or think that something you told us might not be correct, tell a doctor or nurse immediately. You need to do this before you leave hospital.

After you leave hospital

You only leave the hospital when the team looking after you think that your risk of liver damage is very low. If you follow our doctors’ advice, it is unlikely that you will have side effects from your paracetamol overdose.