Clinical Study of Anaphylactic Patients with Bee stings Who Visited the Emergency Department

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: There have been few studies of bee-sting anaphylaxis in patients visiting the Emergency Department. Thus, this study was performed to observe the general characteristics and the various clinical presentations of beesting anaphylaxis. METHODS: The study was performed for two years between January 2001 and December 2002. The objects of the study were 42 patients who were diagnosed as having anaphylaxis due to bee stings among patients who visited Pundang Jae-Saeng Hospital's Emergency Department. Emergency medicine residents directly followed the beesting anaphylaxis protocol. RESULTS: Males were 33 cases (78.6%), and female wewe 9 cases (21.4%). Severe anaphylaxis occurred in 25 cases (59.5%) and mild anaphylaxis in 17 cases (40.5%). The most frequent month was September with 12 cases (28.6%), and the most frequent place was the mountains with 15 cases (35.7% ). Of the 18 cases (42.9%) presenting with a prior bee-sting history, the incidence of severe anaphylaxis was 14 cases (77.8%) whilst of the 24 cases (57.1%) without any prior history, the incidence was 11 (45.8%)(p= 0.037). CONCLUSION: The history of a previous beesting is more related to the incidence of severe anaphylaxis, and of those patients presenting with systemic symptoms, the incidence rate of severe anaphylaxis is higher at 59.5%. Thus, it seems reasonable to treat patients presenting with systemic symptoms from bee stings or with a history of previous bee stings with early administration of epinephrine and to keep them under close observation.