A Prospective Observational Study on Pattern of Poisoning Cases Reported to Emergency Department of a Teaching Hospital in South India

Abstract

A prospective observational study of 12 months duration was conducted in a teaching hospital on 278 cases of acute poisoning reported to emergency department from October 2018 to October 2019. Data regarding patient demographics, type of poisoning agent, duration of hospital stay and outcome were collected and analyzed. The common poisoning agents ingested were organophosphate compounds (41%), drug overdose (36%), Rodenticide (9%), House cleaning agents (6%), Mosquito repellents (4%), Corrosives (1%) and Kerosene (1%). Common drug overdose leading to poisonings were sedatives (9%), followed by nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents (4%). Of the 278 patients, 87 (31%) were males below 30 years of age. A major number of the patients worked as labourers (27%) and farmers (17%) and most were illiterate (36%). Suicide (79%) was found to be the major reason for poisoning. Acute poisoning is a major public health issue, especially among younger population and less educated. Analyzing the trends in poisoning in south India periodically will assist the healthcare workers and policy makers to device suitable management and effective prevention strategies like educational interventions about insecticide handling and establishing poison information centres.

A Cross Sectional Study on Socio-demographic Profile of Deceased due to suspected poisoning coming for autopsy in FMT Department IGIMS, Patna, Bihar

“…In our study, the majority of suspected poisoning cases were caused by the oral route (91.1%). Similar ndings have been reported by several previous studies [12,16,24]. This could be because of the easy availability of drugs that are consumed orally and used most commonly for the purpose of poisoning.…”

“…Of the 146 patients, 72 (49.3%) were 21-40 years old, which was similar to the ndings of previous studies by Reddy et al [11] and Nadeem et al [12]. This nding could be because this age group is the productive age group, which is socioeconomically productive.…”

“…A similar study from southern India showed that the highest number of cases occurred in May (27%) [22]. Similar ndings have been observed in a previous study [12]. This increase in the number of suicide cases in the months of summer may be attributed to the relatively high serotonin levels in summer.…”

“…Similar ndings were observed in a study performed by Vijay V [16], whereas contrasting ndings were observed in studies by Gargi J et al [17] and Sharma BR et al [18]. A larger percentage (72.6%) of the patients were married (Table 1), which resembles the ndings of three similar studies showing 72%, 67% and 78% of the patients were married [12,19,20]. This nding may be attributed to the fact that married people in India are at increased risk of suicide due to nancial stress and increasing marital discord.…”

A Review on Household Poisoning and its Management

“…Acute poisoning is a major public health concern, particularly among the younger and less educated populations. 19 In our article, literature review was conducted on Pubmed, Google scholar, Dove press, Science direct etc., by using the search terms such as household poisoning, review article on household poisoning. Filters applied during the search was Year (Jan 2017-Dec 2021), Type of article (Full text review article) from which we obtained an overall of 32 full text review articles, in that 7 articles were found closely related to our review which is mentioned in Table : 2.…”