A multi-center prospective clinical study on the epidemiology of 1 965 patients with acute poisoning

Objective To investigate the epidemiological characteristics of acute poisoning patients. Methods After the survey registration form was designed independently, a multi-center prospective study of patients with acute poisoning admitted into Emergency Department was carried out from May 2015 to September 2016 in 9 hospitals in Jiangsu Province. Results A total of 1 965 acute poisoning patients consisting of 893 males and 1 072 females were enrolled. Of them, there was 1.73% in-hospital mortality. Among them, the major cause of poisoning exposure was suicide (54.96%); The two leading toxic substances were pesticides (35.83%) and medicines abused (23.16%), which constituted the mortalities of 70.59% and 70.59%, respectively. Paraquat (12.37%) was the most commonly poisoning exposure. Ingestion was the predominant access route of poisoning exposure in 93.18% of all poisoning cases, and 38.27% of those cases were treated with gastric lavage. Other kinds of treatment were utilizations of antagonists (22.34%) and glucocorticoid (12.62%), and hemoperfusion (18.83%), and hemodialysis (1.37%). Conclusion Pesticide remains the most common poisons and results the highest mortality of all substances involved in poisoning exposure cases in general hospitals in Province. Ingestion is the most common route in all poison cases. Key words: Acute poisoning; Epidemiology; Multi-center; Prospective study