Medicolegal Responsibility in Acute Poisoning Cases: Highlight on the Related Egyptian Laws

Introduction: According to the World Health Organization (WHO), acute poisoning cases were reported to be 3 million, with annual deaths up to 20,000. Even in medicolegal cases, the main duty of a doctor is “to save the patient's life”, and then fulfill the basic medico-legal duties to assist the investigating officer in the case. Ignorance of medico-legal duties is not an excuse or defense for avoiding punishment or penalty in a court of law. Aim: This article aims to highlight the medicolegal duties of doctors in acute poisoning cases and to increase their medicolegal awareness to handle these issues properly. Methodology: Data were collected by systematic searching for related articles between the years 2010 and 2023 using suitable keywords through different databases: Google, PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of Science, and WHO reports. All related peer-reviewed articles from these databases were included in the study. On the other hand, articles from unknown publishers and closed-access articles were excluded. Reference to related Egyptian laws was made. Results The medicolegal duties of the doctor in acute poisoning cases include the legal obligation to treat all patients in emergency cases, inform authorities, ensure proper maintenance of records, collect, and preserve samples, make a dying declaration and death certificate, and recommend a postmortem examination in case of death. Conclusion: Doctors not only have a medical duty to manage the patient and save his life, but they also have medicolegal duties, which must be known to handle the medicolegal issues properly.