Evaluation of the Patients Admitted to the Emergency Room due to Poisoning in terms of Clinical Characteristics and Costs

Abstract

Objective: In this study, it is aimed to evaluate the demographic, etiologic and clinical characteristics of the poisoning cases admitted to emergency room along with their costs to Social Security Institution.Materials and Methods: This is a descriptive study. The data were obtained by retrieving the files of the patients who were registered for poisoning to XXXXXX University Faculty of Medicine Training and Research Hospital adult emergency service between October 2015 and October 2017 from the automation system.Results: Of the patients, 60.3% were in the 18-24 age group, 30.6% were in the 25-34 age group and 60.0% were females. Of the admissions, 56.8% were due to suicide attempt. In the 18-24 age group and in women, poisonings were found more likely to be a suicide attempt. Of the patients, 50.6% admitted with drug poisoning. The second common cause of poisoning after drugs was carbon monoxide (CO) with 20.6%. Conclusion: Poisoning is an important public health problem requiring urgent diagnosis and treatment. Most of the drug poisonings, which have a significant share in all poisonings, are suicide attempts. For this reason, the presence of psychiatric symptoms must be investigated in patients with drug poisoning. The second common cause of poisoning after drugs was found to be CO in our study. This situation should be taken into account especially for applications in winter period. Poisoning is also costly in terms of the health economy. It is important to raise public awareness of poisoning in order to prevent both health-related and financially adverse consequences.

Keywords

• emergency room
• costs
• poisoning
• acil servis
• maliyet
• zehirlenme