Epidemiological Aspects of Acute Poisoning in Children Admitted to a Referral Hospital During a Six-Year-Period

Objective: Acute poisoning is considered as an important health problem leading to admission of children. Also, the epidemiologic surveillance specific for each country is necessary. Therefore, we conducted this study to obtain the epidemiological information on poisoning in Nemazee Hospital, a referral center in South of Iran. Methods: In this cross sectional study, we determined age, sex, presence of suicidal intent and poisoning incidence and causes of the children admitted to Nemazee Hospital due to poisoning from 2008 to 2013. Results: We found that 1391 out of 21940 admissions were due to poisoning with an incidence of 6.3%. Mean age of the patients was 9.34±6.11 years; 40.5% were male. Poisoning was intentional in 53.3% of cases. The most frequent causes of poisoning were drugs (54.3%), opium (7.9%), methadone (7.6%), household products (6%) and hydrocarbons (3.5%). Conclusion: According to our findings, the rate of pediatric in-patient poisoning was high. Also, drugs, opium and methadone were the most common poisonous substances.