poisoning and overdose - Defining terms

Question 1

Self-harm

Answer 1

Behavior that can be harmful to the body or mind.

E.G. Drugs, alcohol, smoking
all of which have long-term effects.

Question 2

What is self injury?

Answer 2

Deliberate non-suicidal behavior that inflicts physical harm on your body and is aimed at relieving emotional distress.

Question 3

epidemiology

Answer 3

2015 there were 3674 adult deaths due to poisoning in England and wales.

Question 4

1. drug poisoning deaths involve many substances, including legal and illegal drugs, prescription drugs, and over-the-counter medicines.
2. over two-thirds of these death were males.
3. half of all deaths involved more than one drug with or without alcohol.
4. 447 deaths involved poisoning with antidepressants and 197 poisoning with paracetamol.

Question 5

1. since poisoning us a dynamic processs, time points when pts are a particular risk.
2. Examples:: life-threatening events in tricyclic antidepressant overdoses occur within 6 hours. if the ingestion is well beyond that then the patient is less likely to be at risk.
3. However some sustained-release medication may require 24 hours or longer of observation in the hospital.

Question 6

• In order to determine the most appropriate action it is important to understand whether the drug/poison is toxic in the quantity that the patients has been exposed to.
• In the UK toxbase is the most commonly used online database.
• The pharmaceutical most commonly enquired about in the telephone contacts with NPIS and in online toxbase access is paracetamol, followed by ibuprofen then co-codamol and then codine phosphate.