A Five-Year Study on the Profile of Acute Poisoning Cases Admitted to Poison Center, Alexandria, Egypt

Abstract

Background: Poisoning remains one of the health problems that causes significant patient mortality and morbidity worldwide regardless of a country's development or culture. It can occur secondary to exposure to natural ingredient or chemical substance.Methods: This study was conducted to evaluate Alexandria Poison Center (APC) data for trends and modes of poisoning exposure over a 5-year period and to evaluate the characteristics of human exposure based on the cases received by APC. The data was collected retrospectively from 1st of January 2017 to 31st of December 2021 and all patients admitted through this time (36853 cases) were included.Results: The study revealed that poisoning occurs significantly more in females than males and the highest incidence of poisoning occurred in adult category. Pesticides were accountable for the highest number of poisoning cases; also, pesticides were responsible for more than 70% of deaths. So, Pesticides were selected as a model to be analyzed in detail. On the side of the study, the effect of COVID-19 was studied and revealed no significant changes in profile of acute poisoning cases, however, suicidal tendency remarkably increased in 2020 and 2021 in comparison to other studied years.

Keywords

• acute poisoning
• pesticides
• poisoning
• alexandria