An Epidemiological Study of Alcohol Poisoned Patients Admitted to the Sina Educational Hospital Tabriz-Iran

Abstract

Background: Alcohol poisoning causes several clinical signs and symptoms. The present study was carry out to examine the epidemiology and characteristics of poisoned patients with alcohol, who were treated at the Sina hospital Tabriz in Iran.Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the clinical features and laboratory tests in alcohol poisoning.Methods: In the current expressive cross-sectional report, during 2018-2020 details were obtained over referring to all 91 alcohol poisoned patients’ files. The data were obtained based on the time interval between poisoning and time of admission to hospital. The data were then analyzed through SPSS software and descriptive statistics.Results: All over this period, 91 cases of alcohol-poisoned patients were hospitalized, out of which 81 patients (90%) were male and 9 patients (10%) were female. Mostly ethanol was used in poisoning (68.7%) and methanol (28%). 56% of alcohol poisoned patients used alcohol for euphoria, 33.3% used it for suicide, and 10.7% used it recreationally. Most poisoning symptoms occurred between 6 to 12 hours after poisoning. Neurological symptoms occurred among 70 patients (76.9%), 52 cases (57%) had gastrointestinal symptoms, and 19 patients (20.8%) had visual symptoms.Conclusion: Most of poisoned patients were men below the age of 30 years and unemployed. Alcohol consumption for euphoria were more common among people with higher education occasionally for recreation and those with high school education level were for suicide to get rid of problems from living environment. Particular attention of health authorities should be directed towards alcohol drinking prevention measures as well as production and availability of surrogate alcohols in the community.

Keywords

• alcohol
• complications
• poisoning
• epidemiology
• iran