Z. Ozkose et F. Ayoglu, Etiological and demographical characteristics of acute adult poisoning in Ankara, Turkey, HUM EXP TOX, 18(10), 1999, pp. 614-618
1 The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate etiological and demog
raphical characteristics of acute adult poisoning patients during 1 year at
a university hospital in Ankara, Turkey.
2 Two-hundred and twenty-eight adults (of which 180 were suicidal poisoning
cases) were admitted to the emergency center with acute poisonings. This w
as 0.7% of all emergency admissions. The female-to-male ratio was 3:1, and
the majority of patients (63.6%) were below the age of 25 years.
3 Drugs were the major cause in 75.9% of the cases, followed by inhalation
of gases (17.6%), food (2.6%), corrosives (2.2%), pesticides (0.9%), and al
cohol (0.9%). Analgesics were the most common cause of drug poisoning (29.7
% of all substances). There were no fatalities.
4 It is important to realize that this study is a hospital-based study, and
hence it may be considered difficult to draw conclusions for the whole pop
ulation of Turkey. However, we consider that the reason for such a high rat
io of analgesic poisoning is probably due to the habit of extensive analges
ic prescribing in Ankara, which is the capital of Turkey.