A Cross Sectional Prospective Study to Assess the Clinic-Demographic Profile of Children Admitted with Poisoning at a Tertiary Care Center
European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine,
2023, Volume 10, Issue 2, Pages 2213-2219
Abstract
Childhood poisoning is one of the emergencies commonly encountered in paediatric practice.Young children aged 1 to 5 years were found to be more prone to innocently ingesting small amounts of a single substance. New research indicates that various social and demographic factors like family size, socioeconomic condition, child rearing and care, exposure and accessibility of poison as well as availability and efficiency of medical facilities are important factors which significantly influence the occurrence and outcome of acute household poisoning cases in children.So, the present study was intended to know various epidemiological factors and clinical profile of children presenting with poisoning.Materials & Methods: A cross sectional prospective descriptive study done on 100children admitted to Pediatric ward were strongly suspected or proven to suffer with acute poisoning at department of Pediatrics J.L.N. Hospital, a tertiary care medical centre attached to J.L.N Medical College Ajmer, Rajasthan during one year period. Socio economic status was classified according to Modified Kuppuswamy SE scale. Patient’s bio data, detailed history, type and nature of poisoning, associated psychological factors and clinical features, course and outcome of acute poisoning in the children. Data entry and Statistical Analysis was performed with the help of Microsoft Excel and SPSS version 22.0v.
Results: The mean age of subjects in this study was 10.99 years. 53% of the children were in the 12-18 years group. 53% of the subjects were females. More than 80% of the study population belonged to the lower and lower middle class. The mean duration in hospital was 1.92 days. Insecticides formed 53% of the poisoning agent followed by household poisons like rat poison and ant killer chalk 20%.57% of children had consumed poison with an attempt to commit suicide and 43% had it accidentally.
Conclusion: We concluded that low socioeconomic status and low percentage of literacy among the parents of the study subjects resulted in poor awareness about the danger of inadvertent or intentional poisoning of their children
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