title: Trends in acute adult poisoning in a ten-year period in Turkey: factors affecting the hazardous outcome.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The aim of this study was to evaluate the trends in acute adult poisoning data during ten years in university emergency department and determine the factors of hazardous outcome such as severe clinical status, prolonged hospital stay and mortality.
  
  
  METHODS
  Medical records of 4569 poisoned patients admitted to Emergency Department (ED) of Qukurova University, School of Medicine in Adana.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The mean age of 2988 females (65.4% of the patients) was 24.5+/-10.1 years, whilst the mean age of 1581 male patients (34.6%) was 29.5+/-13.2 years (p=0.001). Of the poisonings 80.0% were suicidal; 69.4% of the women and 30.6% of the men committed suicide. The most common types of poisonings were ingestion of drugs (58.4%), organophosphates (23.9%) corrosives (3.4%), mushrooms (1.7%), methanol (2.4%), carbon monoxide (2.1%) and unknown (8.1%). Of the total 96.0% were discharged from emergency department, 1.4% transferred to IC and 2.6% died.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Young people and women are high-risk groups for acute poisoning and drug poisoning was found to be the most common type of poisoning. The poisoning by psychoactive drugs is increasinging in the recent years and organophosphates poisoning seems to be still a serious problem in such an agricultural area. However, while the ratios of prolonged hospitalization and mortality are decreasing, suicidal poisoning is seriously increasing (Tab. 4, Fig. 2, Ref. 34). Full Text (Free, PDF) www.bmj.sk.
authors.affiliation: Cukurova University, School of Medicine, Department of Emergency Medicine, Balcali, Adana, Turkey. salim.satar@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Salim
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Satar
authors.forename: Gulsah
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Seydaoglu
authors.forename: Ayca
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Akpinar
authors.forename: Ahmet
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sebe
authors.forename: Emre
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Karakoc
authors.forename: Umut
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Gumusay
authors.forename: Mustafa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yilmaz
authors.forename: Yuksel
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Gokel
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011041:Poisoning / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology; D013405:Suicide / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014421:Turkey / Q000453:epidemiology