Objective:
Acute poisoning in children is still a major health problem. We carried out an epidemiological study of poisonings leading to admission to a pediatric emergency care unit.
Methods:
We analysed the data from 211 patients who were admitted to Dokuz Eylul University Pediatric Emergency Department with acute poisoning from 2001 to 2003. From data, demographic features, the substance caused poisoning, the way of intake and the time, toxicity findings, treatment and clinical observation were collected.
Results:
In our patients, the mean age was 8.4±1.2 years, 58 % of the patients were girls and 42 % were boys. The cause in 69 % was accidents. All of the cases who attempted suicide were over 12 years and 94 % were girls. The causes of acute poisoning in our cases were drugs (59 %), caustic/chorosive substance (9.9 %), and gase inhalation (9.4 %) respectively. Analgesic-antipyretics were the most common ones in acute drug poisoning. Two deaths occurred due to butane gase inhalation (The mortalite rate 0.9 %).
Conclusion:
Acute poisoning is an important cause of the morbidity in children, and an education programme on primary prevention is needed to be developed.
Keywords: acute poisoning, childhood, epidemiology