J Korean Soc Emerg Med.  2020 Feb;31(1):23-38.

The pre-hospital analysis of intentional taking poison in Gangwon-do

• Ahn WC
• Cho JH
• Moon JB
• Park CW
• Shin MC
• Kim KE
• Lee JY
• Park YS
• Hwang BS
• Yang GE
• Lee HY
• Kim MS
• Chun IK
• Ohk TG

Abstract

Objective
This study examined the characteristics of the patients taking poison intentionally at the pre-hospital stage to prevent it at the community level.
Methods
We retrospectively reviewed the data that had been reported to fire stations from January 2017 to December 2018. This data included sex, age, occupation, the season of the year, time, place, methods, alcohol ingestion, transferred to the hospital or not, and we examined how taking poison had an effect on the suicide success rate.
Results
The subjects were a total of 1,356 patients who had been reported to fire stations due to intentionally taking poison. Forty-five point five percent of them were male, and 54.5% were female. The most common method of intentional taking poison was sedatives (58.3%), followed by pesticides (24.6%), antidepressants (19.0%), and other methods (12.6%). The home place was preferred more than any other places. The suicide success rate was 2.1% in males and 1.4% in females. For the age groups, those patients 40-64 years old tried taking poison much more than the other age groups. In the aspect of the season of the year, summer was the highest season for taking poison, at 30.3%. The daytime was more preferred than the night time.
Conclusion
In this study, we analyzed the characteristics of the pre-hospital intentional poisoning cases according to gender, age, occupation, season of the year, time, and between the transferred and the untransferred groups. Efforts should be made in cooperation with the community to prevent suicide attempts by intentionally taking poison.

Keyword

Emergency medical services; Poisoning; Treatment refusal