Acute Poisoning Cases in a Tertiary Care Hospital of Peshawar

Abstract

Objective: We aimed herein to assess mode, manner, type and clinical characteristics of poisoning in patients presented to Lady Reading Hospital emergency department.

Methods: All information related to poisoning including mode of transmission, demographic information, duration of hospital stay, name of poison ingested, inhaled and intension of poisoning was retrieved from the medical record room of Lady Reading Teaching Hospital (LRH) casualty department. The cases reported with a history of acute poisoning were recorded for a period of one year from February 2016 to January 2017. 

Results: Acute Poisoning contributed to 1.96% (n=430) of all the cases admitted to emergency. 60.2% (n = 259) percent of the patients were female. The majority of the victims were in 18-25 years age group (P < 0.001).232 (54%) patients admitted with a history of suicide. 111 (25.8%) were poisoned with drug over dose, 237 (54.3%) of patients were either the victim of accidental or homicidal poisoning. Suicidal poisonings were more common in young age group and females (P <0.001). Among prescribed medications the most common poisoning agent were neurotics (39.6%) followed by drug over dose (25.8%) and analgesics (23.7%). Antidepressant drugs were the most common prescription drugs taken for suicidal purposes. Analysis of duration of hospital stay revealed that 29.8% (n = 128) of patients stayed in hospital for 2 days. The mortality rate was 0.5%.

Conclusion: The majority of poisonings were due to over dose of prescription drugs such as anti-depressants, abuse of alcohol and cannabis. Suicidal tendency was more in young age groups and in females. Most common agents causing poisoning were antidepressants, analgesics, rat pills and other psychotropic substances. The study also indicated that most of the incidents occur at home when victim was either alone or left unattended