Acute Childhood Poisoning in Azare North Eastern Nigeria

Aim: To describe the clinical profile of acute poisoning amongst children admitted into the Federal Medical Centre Azare, Nigeria.

Study Design: Cross-sectional retrospective.

Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted at the department of paediatrics, Federal Medical Centre, Azare, Nigeria from 1st January 2013 to 31st December 2017.

Methodology: Medical records of children admitted with complaints of undue exposure to poison agents were retrieved and analysed. The information collected includes, the age, sex, poisoning agent, place of occurrence of the event, the time between occurrence and presentation to the hospital, route of poisoning, circumstances of the event, presenting symptoms, elicited clinical signs, outcome, and duration of hospital stay. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS version 20.0.

Results: Acute poisoning accounted for 0.68% of the total admissions giving a prevalence of 684 per 100,000. The male to female ratio was 1.4:1. The children were aged 9 months to 12 years. However, the majority of subjects (73.2%) were aged 1-4 years.

The most frequently encountered poison agent is organophosphate with kerosene being the next most common. Vomiting was most indicative of organophosphate poisoning while cough, dyspnea, and tachypnea were indicative of kerosene poisoning. Thirty-eight patients (92.7%) were successfully managed and discharged without sequelae. One death was documented, giving a mortality rate of 2.4%. The relationship between poison agents and outcome was statistically significant (χ2 = 22.55, df = 10, P = .013).

Conclusion: Acute childhood poisoning is more common in Azare than most other parts of Nigeria. Organophosphates constitute the most frequent poison agent. However, kerosene poisoning is the most likely to cause mortality.