Acute poisoning is a major public health problem all over the world, it causes significant mortality and morbidity. It primarily involves younger populations, with less than 3% of the affected cases being in people aged 60 years or older in most studies. More than half of the intoxication events in the elderly over 65 years old were accidental.
The elderly are different from younger adults in many aspects. There are age related physiological changes. They have a higher incidence of comorbidities and use of many medications for chronic conditions, both of which make the elderly more susceptible to acute poisoning and its related consequences. Although the elderly form a relatively small proportion of those admitted to hospital for acute self-poisoning, the poisoning in them is often more serious, complications are more frequent and a fatal outcome is more common. The presence of multiple physical, social, and psychiatric problems, with possible difficulties in the diagnosis of poisoning make the management of the elderly more complicated than that of younger poisoned patients. There are three main difficulties in diagnosing acute poisoning in the elderly. At first, it may not be easily obvious that the patient has taken an overdose. Secondly, the presence of pre-existing diseases may obscure the clinical picture and finally, the drug may cause physical signs that similar to common problems of old age.
Study Type
OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment
20
Change in Acute physiology and chronic health evaluation II score (APACHE II) in cases of elderly patients with acute poisoning.
"Acute Physiology And Chronic Health Evaluation II(APACHE II) " is a severity-of-disease classification system. one of several ICU scoring systems. It is applied within 24 hours of admission of a patient to an intensive care unit (ICU): an integer score from 0 to 71 is computed based on several measurements; higher scores correspond to more severe disease and a higher risk of death.
Time frame: 24 hours after admission to intensive care unit (ICU).
Change in Poisoning Severity Score (PSS) in cases of elderly patients with acute poisoning.
"Poisoning Severity Score (PSS)" is a standardized scale for grading the severity of poisoning allows qualitative evaluation of. morbidity caused by poisoning, better identification of real risks and comparability of data.
Time frame: 24 hours after admission to intensive care unit (ICU).
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