Determination of pediatric poisoning factors in children

Abstract

Background and Objective: Poisoning is a major public health problem and a serious form of the common causes of hospital emergency visits in many countries. Incidence of toxicity based on cultural and economic characteristics of communities are varied. This study was done to determine the pediatric poisoning factors in children. Methods: This descriptive-cross sectional study was performed on 201 patients younger than 12 years old with posinnig symptoms whom referred to hospitals in Shahroud city of central part of Iran from April 2011 to March 2012. Demogaphic data, posinnig symptoms, posinnig agents, time of hospitalization and outcome of posinnig for each child were recored in quetionare. Results: Opium was the most common consumed material with (51.2%) while metadon considered to be the major opium. 180 (89.6%) and 21 (10.4%) children were poisoned accidentaly by their parant respectively. The clinical manifestation of the affected children were 15 (7.5%), 11 (5.5%), 93 (46.3%), 26 (12.9%), 19 (2.5%) and 22 (10.9%) without any symptoms, neuro-respiratory, nervous, gastrointestinal, gastrointestinal-respriatory and weakness respectively. Two children were died in the course of this project. There was a significant statistical correlation between the reason for poisoning and age parant education level and type of poisoning. Also, there was a relation between the type of poisoning and place of residence (P<0.05). Conclusion: This study shows that the most common cause of poisoning among children was opiums