RESUMEN
The notification of intoxication is not compulsory in Brazil and this data is underestimated, although is recognizedly a public health problem. The objective of this article was to evaluate the intoxication case admitted to the hospitalar unity of regional reference, the Conjunto Hospitalar de Sorocaba (CHS). It was made a retrospective analysis of the datas (date, age, gender and toxic agent) obtained from bulletins of poisoned patients between september 2002 to septemmber 2003. Analysis was performed, initially, using a descriptive analysis following by Pearson Chi-Square and Fisher's Exact tests. There were 2,992 poisoning cases: the predominant age range was 36-50years: gender: male predominance (2,754 cases: 92%); toxic agent: abusive drugs (2,721 cases; 90.9%) with alcoholic predominance (2,383 cases; 87.6%), use of medicine together with dependence between toxic agent and gender (p<0.01), showing that abusive drugs are more used by men than women, whwreas the medicine are more used by womwn than men. The Fisher's Exact test, on the other hand, showed that the intoxication by abusive drugs occurs between 36-50 age range (p<0.01) and the medicine occurs between 21-35 years. We conclude that the psychoactive drugs are the responsible by the intoxication cases admitted to the CHS and we suggest the adoption of measures aiming to contain the intoxication cases mainly by alcohol and medicines...