Evalution of patients admitted to the inonu university, Turgut Ozal Medical Center, pediatric emergency unit because of drug toxicity in last seven years and determination of risk factors

Aims: Drug poisoning is preventable morbidity and mortality cause in the childhood period. In our study examine the demographic and clinical characteristics of childhood drug poisonings, detection the effective factors on mortality, research modifications in diagnosis and treatment and thus recommendations for the prevention of poisonings are aimed. Materials and methods: Drug poisoning cases (n:655) aged between 1 month-18 years who applied to the Pediatrics Emergency Unit of Turgut Ozal Medical Center between January 2009- June 2007 were evaluated retrospectively.The study made by scaning retrospective files of drug poisoning cases to 1 month-18 years patients refers to Turgut Ozal Medical Center, Children's Emergency Department between 01.01.2009-01.06.2016 from provinces of Malatya and the surroundings. Results: In our study; 409 female (62.4%) and 246 men (37.6%) for a total of 655 patients were analyzed. Drug poisoning cases were found to be 1.08% of all applications for emergency patients. In the total of 655 patients, 6.11% were between 1 month – 2 age range, 52.21% were between 1-7 age range, 4.9% were between 7-13 age range 36.85 % were between 13-18 age range. It was noted that 62.1% of poisonings was accident wheras, 33 % was suicide attamps and 4.9 % therapeutic mistakes. It was determined that 94.8% of the drug poisoning cases occurred at home and 5.2% occurred outside the home. All of poisoning cases differ in terms of gender (62.4% female, 37.6% male).562 admitted to the emergency department of pediatric hospital were from inside province, 93 were from outside of the province. It has been found that due to an accident drug and non-drug poisonings increases during the summer and spring months. Peaked in the age group of 1-7 men poisonings (181 people) was higher than the girls (161 persons) 13-18 age group girls (211 persons) were found to be more than men (30 people). In our study, it was found that all of the 1 month- 7 age group poisonings were accidents which can be prevented by taking measures Accordingly, the storage of drug materials, packaging, identification of potential drugs, in-house training for security measures, updating information on the drug poisoning of health personnel, training for parents and their children, politicians to take structural, development of drug poisoning preventive health policies is therefore required. Key Words:Poisoning; childhood; epidemiology