Abstract
Background: Acute poisoning is an important problem which patients often encounter in hospitals, and in particular – emergency and urgent care departments, that can create high risk to the patient’s health and therefore should be addressed efficiently. Knowledge of the nature of poisons and the pattern of poisoning cases can help to advance clinicians’ methods and population health strategies.
Aim: The objective of this research is to ascertain the different features and tendencies of acute poisoning admissions at a tertiary care hospital in Rawalpindi from the year 2020 up to 2023.
Methods: Records from the hospital and emergency department reports were searched for a retrospective study. The inclusion criteria involved all the patients that were diagnosed to have acute poisoning within the study period and the exclusion criteria involved all the patients with incomplete records or chronic poisoning. Information on patient characteristics which include age, gender, type of poisoning as well as intentional/accidental poisoning, substance used, time of presentation, treatment strategies, as well as outcomes were collected. Permission was granted by the ethics committee and patients’ identity was maintained throughout the study.
Results: Patient sample was also presented as diverse regarding age and gender, with the abundance of cases of unintentional child poisoning and youth and adult intentional poisoning cases. The most frequent products involved in the overdoses were pharmaceuticals, followed by pesticides. Another observation made from the study of the trends was that among the people who were affected the pesticide poisonings were traceable to the planting and harvesting seasons while the children who were affected were mostly affected during their schools’ holidays. Therefore, the clinical results differ, and although the increase in the number of surviving patients is observed in cases of accidental poisonings, the outcomes were worse in cases of possible suicidal attempts with the use of highly toxic substances. Gender, age and occupation related poisoning incidence rates also explained the relations between the demographic variables and poisoning types in order to advocate for risk prevention and early intervention measures.
Conclusion: The observations point clearly to the imperative of efficient and proper handling of acute poisoning cases. The study is important for increasing community awareness of proper storage of these matters at home and in kindergartens, as well as measures aimed at strengthening individuals’ psychological health, and the necessity for stricter measures for controlling the use of hazardous products. Hence, the finding of this study can be useful for providing clear information on trends and outcomes in poisoned patients and improving the approach to decreasing the prevalence and severity of acute poisoning in emergency medicine and public health.
Keywords: Acute Poisoning, Emergency Department, Public Health, Retrospective Analysis, Poisoning Trends, Clinical Outcomes, Rawalpindi.