Clinical Profile And Outcome Of Children Presenting With Poisoning (A Hospital Based Study)

Children Presenting With Poisoning

Abstract

Introduction: Poisoning though an important cause of morbidity and mortality in children, has received little attention over the years. Objective : To study the profile of acute poisoning in children less than 15 years age admitted to pediatric ward and PICU of a teaching hospital of Ahmedabad. Materials And Methods : Retrospective analysis of hospital records of pediatric patients admitted with a definite diagnosis of poisoning over a three year period-September 2009 to September 2012.Patients were profiled according to age, sex, poison consumed, symptoms, interval between exposure and presentation, duration of hospital stay, nature of poisoning and demographic profile.Results : A total of 176 cases were analysed completely. The mean age was 4.5 years with an age range of 0.25 to 15 years. The overall male female ratio was 1.17:1. The most common poison was kerosene used as fuel, incidence of insecticide poisoning was low. The mortality was 5.1%. Most patients were from urban background( 83.5%), as many as 59.65% patients presented within first 4 hours after exposure. Accidental poisoning was found in 98.59% of patients rest being suicidal. Mean duration of hospital stay was 3.3 days and vomiting was the commonest clinical manifestation. Conclusion : Poisonings in children in our setup are caused by substances which should not be accessible to children. This fact calls for prospectively designed multicentric studies all over the country to assess the epidemiological and preventive properties of poisoning in children.