Abstract
BACKGROUND: Acute poisoning is a growing challenge to emergency departments (EDs). Our aim is to investigate the recent epidemiological and clinical characteristics of patients with acute poisoning and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the disease pattern. METHODS: This retrospective study included patients with acute poisoning through the medical records from EDs at three tertiary hospitals in Jiangsu Province, China, from January 2017 to April 2023. Their epidemiological and clinical profiles were investigated and analyzed under each category of poisoning. In parallel, the enrolled patients were also divided into the pre-COVID (January 2017-December 2019) and amid-COVID (January 2020-April 2023) groups to derive the differences between them. RESULTS: For 1,876 patients enrolled, their mean age was 49.5 ± 21.1 years, where the female-to-male ratio (FMR) was 1.1. The most common toxic substances were pesticides (31.6%), drugs (31.1%), and alcohol (17.1%). Predominantly, acute poisoning occurred at domiciliary sites (76.4%) and with intention (52.9%). Inpatients were much older than outpatients (52.0 ± 21.9 years versus 47.6 ± 20.2 years). Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the patients with acute poisoning became much younger, and the cases of alcohol poisoning became more frequent. With the increasing cases of acute poisoning, the patient admissions to hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) were both decreased. CONCLUSION: Epidemiological results revealed that the acute poisoning by pesticides and drugs occurred primarily at home and through suicidal attempts. The most susceptible age to a given poisoning may differ, but a working-age group remains the largest population of intentionally or unintentionally poisoned victims. The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on acute poisoning was prominent, which significantly altered the epidemiological and clinical characteristics.