Pattern of toxicology cases in Emergency, Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital

Abstract

Background: Acute poisoning is one of the major contributors of heath problem causing morbidity and mortality in the emergency of the hospital. The study focused on the demographic and epidemiological aspects of all the poisoning cases that came to Emergency of TUTH.

Methods: The study was a cross-sectional retrospective data collection of all poisoning cases recorded in hospital from April 2016 to March 2018. Hospital records of all poisoning cases were used to extract demographic and other data such as poisonous agents used, circumstance of poisoning, route and outcome of poisoning. The data analysis was done in Microsoft Excel.

Results: The total number of cases was 641 out of which 40 cases were excluded from the study. Of 601 cases, males were 42.09% and females were 57.90%. The most common age group for both male and female was 16-26 years group and male to female ratio was 1:1.3. The most common circumstance of poisoning was deliberate self-harm which was 91.68% followed by accidental which was 4.6%. The common route of administration was ingestion at 99.91%. The mortality in the Emergency was 5.15% and total of 75.04% cases were admitted in observation after primary management in ER and discharged from the observation after improvement and psychiatric evaluation. The most common toxicology agent was pesticide at 52.57%followed by pharmaceuticals at 25.45%.

Conclusions: Pesticides are the major cause of poisoning and accounts for majority of cases of toxicology followed by pharmaceuticals. The study also concludes that the young age group is more vulnerable to poisoning, hence strong regulatory measures are required for control of easy accessibility of these substance.