Abstract
Exogenous poisonings are one of the principal accidents involving children and adolescents. The social isolation promoted by the COVID-19 pandemic raises concerns about the possibility of an increase in poisoning among children since most cases of poisoning occur in home environments. Therefore, the present study evaluated exogenous poisonings in children under ten years of age and adolescents aged 11 to 20 years old through data recorded at the Toxicological Information and Assistance Center in the Federal District (CIATOX-DF) from January to September 2020. The results showed a change in the number of notifications, with 1.037 poisonings registered in patients under 20 years of age. Registrations of poisoning by venomous animals, medications, and household cleaning products in children tend to be higher in months of vacation. This study demonstrated poisoning notifications by non-venomous animals in March and April and household cleaning products as the second leading cause of exogenous poisoning, demonstrating a clear temporal association among social isolation, increased use of household cleaning products, and exposure to these products. The multivariate analysis methodology managed to show the significant characteristics of the studied sample, contributing to creating local actions that aim to reduce the number of preventable cases of poisonings.
Highlights
Poisonings are defined as clinical signs of the nocive effects caused by a chemical substance on a living organism (Oliveira & Suchara, 2014). These substances are found in the environment or as isolated products (Fukuda et al, 2015)
Data collect Data were taken from Toxicology Information and Assistance Center Program (CIAT DF) version 01, exported and stored in Excel spreadsheets and analyzed using the statistical program Système Portable d'Analyse - SPAD, version 7.4 (Lebart et al, 1994), professional version capable of working with a large number of individuals and variables, from Coheris’ producer, a version created in 2010
The present study results showed exogenous poisoning rates of 21.05%, in ages 2 to 10 years old, from January to September 2020. This number is consistent with that detected by SINITOX, nationally, in 2017 (21.81%) for children aged 0 to 10 years old (Sistema Nacional de Informações Tóxico-Farmacológicas [SINITOX], 2020)
Summary
Poisonings are defined as clinical signs of the nocive effects caused by a chemical substance on a living organism (Oliveira & Suchara, 2014). Exogenous poisonings are one of the principal accidents involving children and represent about 7% of accidents in children under five years of age (Lourenço et al, 2008) In pediatrics, they are listed as one of the most common causes in emergency care (Oliveira & Suchara, 2014) (Farnaghi et al, 2016) and are the second most common cause of child death in these scenarios, second only to car accidents (Farnaghi et al, 2016). Accidental poisoning is a worldwide public health problem, corresponding to approximately 45 thousand annual deaths with an incidence of 1.8 per 100 thousand inhabitants (Vilaca et al, 2020)
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