ABSTRACT
Background: Poisoning is the major health problem in developing countries like India. Rodenticides are one of the commonest substances used for poisoning in India. Rodenticides are the substances used to kill rats. They differs from chemical composition and toxicity profile. Prognosis mainly depends on chemical content of poison.Methods: This retrospective record-based study was conducted between October 2018 to September 2019 at MIMS tertiary care teaching hospital, Mandya, Karnataka, India. Data regarding age, sex, marital status, occupation, socioeconomic status, type of poison, route of exposure, clinical presentation, complications and outcome of poisoning and associated comorbid conditions were collected from the hospital records and documented in the pre-structured proforma. Descriptive analysis was carried out by the mean and standard deviation for quantitative variables, frequency and proportion for categorical variables.Results: Out of 126 study subjects, 77 (61.11%) were female, 49 (38.89%) were male. Most common age group was 21 to 30 years (45.23%), followed by 31 to 40 years (26.19%) group. Most common poison was zinc phosphide (52.39%), followed by yellow phosphorous (30.16%). Mode of poisoning was suicidal (94.4%) followed by accidental (5.6%).Most common symptom at presentation was nausea, vomiting (62.6%) followed by pain abdomen (52.4%).Most common complication was hepatitis 34 (26.98%) patients, followed by hepatic encephalopathy in 6 (4.76%) and cardiogenic shock in 6 (4.76%) patients. Total mortality was 8 (6.3%).Conclusions: Among rodenticides zinc phosphide was most common consumed poison in present study. Yellow phosphorous was most toxic poison and Aluminium phosphide was most lethal poison. Even though there is no specific antidote, early symptomatic treatment is the key in reducing the mortality.
ABSTRACT
Background: Medication errors are one of the most common types of medical error that is seen in hospitalised patients. Since medication error is one of the growing concerns of healthcare issue and have implications on patient safety, the purpose of this study was to identify medication error and in turn would help to create awareness among healthcare professionals and provide safety to the patients.Methods: Study was initiated after obtaining approval from the Institutional Ethics Committee. The study was done for a period of 1 year between June 2016 and May 2017. Clinical data and data regarding the medication that was prescribed, transcribed, dispensed, administered was collected and was analysed for various types of medication errors during the different stages of medication use process.Results: A total of 351 subjects were recruited in the study for assessing medication error. About 2,283 drugs were prescribed among 351 patients. Maximum number of drugs was administered through parenteral route (50.3%). Medication error was most common during the prescribing stage (51.4%) followed by transcribing stage (39.1%), administration stage (6.9%), and dispensing stage (2.6%). On an average 6 drugs were prescribed per patient. Total of about 5411 errors have occurred out of which 98.8% of errors were preventable, 1.2% of errors were non-preventable. Cardiovascular system (21.9%) and endocrine and renal system (21.9%) was commonly affected due to the medication errors.Conclusions: Medication errors are one of the commonest problems of the healthcare system should be identified and documented and their causes should be studied in order to develop systems that minimize the recurrence.