Risk Factors and Outcome of Acute Poisoning in Childrens

Objective: To determine the risk factors and outcome of acute poisoning in children at a tertiary care hospital of Karachi.

Study design: Cross sectional study

Place and duration of study: Department of Emergency Medicine, Dr Ziauddin Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan. From January 2019 to January 2021

Methodology: The patients (n=136) were selected of either gender with the precise age group of twelve years. All the patients selected were meeting the inclusion criteria and enrolled with a history of poisoning exposure within 24 hours of arriving at the hospital's emergency department. The name of the toxin, the time since ingestion of the toxic substance, factors prompting coincidental harming like age, ill-advised capacity of hurtful specialists, for example, lamp oil and blanch in soda bottles, simple access of kids to meds utilized by different individuals from the family, mother's schooling, working moms, financial status were completely assembled from the guardians or orderlies as referenced in the Performa. In general, people were poisoned primarily from within their own homes. Non-accidental poisoning cases were omitted. SPSS version 22 was used to analyze the data.

Results: Out of 136 patient enrolled in this study mean age was 5.2+2.9 years, 77(56.6%) were male and 59(43.4%) were female and mean time of presentation was 2.3+1.7 hours. Most common risk factor was unsafe storage of chemicals (n=98) (72.1%), followed by education level of mother (n=)65 (47.8%), inadequate supervision of child (n=60) (44.1%), non authorative parenting (n=51) (37.5%), working mothers (n=41) (30.1%), lack of family support (n=30) (22.1%), developmental delay (n=11) (8.1%) and poisonous plant in home garden (n=6) (4.4%). Outcome mainly depends upon type of poisoning and time interval between poisoning and presentation to the hospital, 26 (19.11%) were discharged safely from ER, while 45 (33.08%) admit in wards and 48 (35.29%) were admitted in Intensive Care and 17 (12.5%) were expired in ER.

Conclusion: In this study we have concluded that number of accidental poisoning are often occur in toddler and school going children. The major risk factor of acute poisoning found was unsafe storage or easy accessibility of house hold chemicals, second one was low level of education of parents, than non-authorative parenting, and working mothers and lack of family support. The outcome mainly depend upon time interval from ingestion of poison to presentation at hospital and type poisonous agent taken, that can lead to the need of specialized care, prolong hospital stay and sometimes results in death of a child.