Pharmaceutical poisoning management at the Emergency Departments of a provincial hospitals

ABSTRACT

Background: Medicinal products’ overdose is one of the most common causes of poisoning. It is treated primarly in the emergency department (E.D.) of a hospital.

Aim: The purpose of this study is to assess the management of drug poisoning in the E.D. in a hospital.  

Material and Methods: This is a retrospective study conducted at the General Hospital during the years 2008,2009,2015,2016 and 2017. The studied sample consisted of 258 patients over the age of 15 (>15) who were admitted to the E. D. Demographic characteristics, dates of occurrence, cause and time of incidents, time and way of patient transport, underlying diseases, ABCDE system, laboratory and radiological examination, electrocardiogram, length of hospital stay and the final outcome were recorded in all patient cases. The dada was processed with the use of the statistical package SPSS23.

Results: 65,9%(n=170) were female and 33,3%(n=86) were male with an average age of 39,8 years. The most common causes of drug poisoning ware the intake of benzodiazepines at 41.5% (n = 107) and painkillers at 18.6% (n = 48). In most cases 99.2% (n = 239) hematological (blood) and biochemical tests were conducted which revealed that 7 out of ten cases were associated with a mental illness, while 58,2% of the patients’ stay time at the ED was less than an hour.

Conclusions: The results showed that a large percentage of patients had unnecessary admitted to a clinic. The examinations performed at the E.D., in most cases, were unnecessary and the patients stay time was short. Improper recording of the patients’ handwriting records was noticed.

Keywords: Emergency department, overdose, pharmaceutical poisoning, acute poisoning