Blood Sugar Changes in Patients with Acute Drug Poisoning

Abstract

Changes in blood sugar in poisoning can be one of the most important determinants of the outcome of patients with poisoning. Since poisoning is one of the most common and increasing causes of death worldwide and one of the most critical medical emergencies, this study aimed to investigate changes in blood sugar in patients with acute poisoning and how patients' blood sugar can predict the severity and outcome of the disease. The present study was performed on 200 patients with acute drug poisoning referred to the emergency department of Amir Al-Momenin Hospital in Zabol from March 2018 to March 2020. Blood glucose levels of all patients were recorded at the time of admission and every hour to the first 5 hours after admission, and the results were entered in the information form of each patient. Finally, the data were entered into SPSS V22 software and statistically analyzed. The mean age of participants was 23.21 ± 12.80 years, and the minimum and maximum age of patients were 1 year and 77 years, respectively, and only 9.8% of them had a history of diabetes. In this study, the highest rate of intoxication with opioids such as methadone and tramadol was (38%), followed by benzodiazepines (20.5%), NSAIDs (19.5%), and SSRIs (7%) were the most commonly used drugs. The prevalence of hypoglycemia in this study was 3% (6 patients), while no cases of hyperglycemia were reported. In this study, most changes in blood sugar were caused by alcohol poisoning. Also, neuroleptics, NSAIDs, and chemicals had the least changes in blood sugar. However, patients' blood sugar at the beginning of poisoning did not affect patients' prognosis. The present study results showed that changes in blood sugar during treatment during drug intoxication, alcohol, medications(sulfonylurea, glibenclamide), and NSAID are very important, so regular monitoring of blood glucose in intoxication with these cases is essential.