Acute Intoxications in an Intensive Care Department: Years 2002 to 2014
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24950/rspmi.818Keywords:
Alcoholic Intoxication, Intensive Care Units, Pesticides/ poisoning, PoisoningAbstract
Introduction: Despite the shortage in literature, poisonings are
a frequent reality in admissions to Intensive Care Department
(ICD). This is facilitated by the easy acquisition of toxic substances.
Objectives: Characterization of the acute poisoning hospitalizations
in the IMS and its evolution.
Material and methods: Descriptive and inferential retrospective
analysis of the patients hospitalized from January 2002 to December
2014, in the ICD of the Hospitais da Universidade de
Coimbra, considering: age, sex, length of hospital admission,
intentionality, duration of the mechanical ventilation, mortality
and previous poisoning history or psychiatric illness. The data
was obtained from the ICD data base. Statistical analysis was
performed with SPSS version 20.0® program. Results: The 234
identified patients were aged between 13 and 83 years (mean
50.79 years ± 16.99) and 55.98% were male. In 88.90% of the
cases, the poisoning was voluntary, with no statistically significant
difference between genders. There was a statistically
significant relationship between the female gender and the
history of poisoning, p = 0.014. The toxic agent was very
heterogeneous, but drugs were the most frequent source of
intoxication (35.04%) and 19.66% of patients used more than
one toxic agent. The length of hospital stay, duration of mechanical
ventilation and the APACHE II score showed statistically
significant differences when poisoning by pesticides,
drugs or alcohol (p < 0.001) were compared.
Discussion: The results are consistent with previous data
from other authors, revealing the gradual reduction of pesticide
poisonings. Overall, mortality was lower than the average
of admissions in the ICD by other causes. When compared
with other toxics, poisoning by pesticides had the worst
prognosis.
Conclusion: Accumulated experience in treating these patients
allowed therapeutic optimization and improved the prognosis.
Nevertheless, it is still not possible to identify a psychological
profile of the patient with increased risk of death from poisoning
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