Abstract
BackgroundData about acute poisoning in Italian pediatric patients are obsolete or absent. This study would partially fill this exiting gap and compare the scene with others around the world.MethodsA retrospective evaluation was performed on a 2012â2017 data registry of the Childrenâs Emergency Department at the Regina Margherita Hospital of Turin, where 1030 children under age 14 were accepted with a diagnosis of acute intoxication.ResultsThe median age of the patients was 2.2 years (IQR 2.3) and 55% were male. Events occurred mostly in children aged 1â4 years (n = 751, 72.9%). Six hundred and eight patients (59%) were exposed to Nonpharmaceutical agents, the household cleaning products being the more frequent (n = 298, 49%). Exposure to Pharmaceuticals were 422 (41%); the most common Pharmaceuticals were analgesics (n = 88, 20.8%), psychotropics (n = 77, 18.2%) and cardiovascular (n = 53, 12.6%) drugs. The 85% of the intoxications occurred accidentally, the 10.6% as therapeutic error, the 2.3% as suicide attempts and the 1.5% for recreational purposes. No patient died.ConclusionsDespite acute poisoning being a relevant problem in pediatric emergency, our results would seem to paint a less worrying picture if compared to other countries, mainly when considering the children hospitalized in the pediatric intensive care unit and the number of deaths. Nevertheless, our study might represent a tool for public health authorities to program incisive interventions.
Highlights
Acute exposure to chemicals is a common event in pediatrics: it represents one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality around the world [1, 2]
The evident curiosity for the surroundings and the desire to know, to explore and to emulate adults [5], make children exposed to acute intoxications, while above 10 years intoxication is often intentional for suicide/demonstration purposes
Design and setting This is a retrospective study on ascertained acute poisonings on consecutive patients aged from 0 to 14 who presented at the Regina Margherita Hospital from January 1st, 2012 to December 31st, 2017
Summary
Acute exposure to chemicals is a common event in pediatrics: it represents one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality around the world [1, 2]. The entry of over 2000 new chemical substances into the environment increases the risk of intoxication [3]. In 2017, the 35th Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centersâ National Poison Data System referred more than two million calls for cases of human exposure to toxic substances, of which more of 50% concerned acute intoxications in children under 13 years of age [4]. Berta et al Italian Journal of Pediatrics (2020) 46:83 therapeutic errors or erroneous administrations by parents or caregivers [4, 6]. Data about acute poisoning in Italian pediatric patients are obsolete or absent. This study would partially fill this exiting gap and compare the scene with others around the world
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