A Study of Acute Poisoning Cases Admitted to the National Poisoning Center

Abstract

Objectives: There is a necessity to study the pattern of poisoning of patients who visited national poisoning centers to take up appropriate management and prevention techniques. Methods: This study includes all cases of human poisoning exposures (11181 poisoning cases) presenting to the national poisoning center, Cairo, from 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2016. The data were statistically analyzed to assess a correlation for a gender, age, agents and poisoning type. Results: It was found that 24% of patients were younger than 4 years. The female-to-male ratio was 1.6:1. Therapeutic drugs (68%) were the most common cause of poisoning followed by a household product (13%), pesticides (9%), and abuse agents (5%), bites of snakes and scorpions (3%) and food poisoning (1%). Detailed information on groups of pharmaceuticals and the most frequent agents causing poisonings was presented. Analgesics (24%) and central nervous system agents (21%) were the most common therapeutic pharmaceutical poisons. Synthetic opioid; tramadol (45%) was the most common abuse agent. Accidental poisoning of abuse agents in children younger than 4 years represented 20.4 % of the abuse agents poisoning cases. The mortality rate for the patients was 0.3% (32 patients). Conclusion: The prevention of medicinal poisoning should merit high priority in the education interventions and preventive efforts. An important concern toward drugs and abuse agents' availability at homes within the reach of children should be raised. The most risk factors of poisoning are female gender and young age patients.