Acute drug intoxication is continually increasing and despite of proper management, mortality rate is still high. A variety of drugs became available and clinical aspects of drug intoxicatio became rather variable, but recent reports abut drug intoxication is rare, so we analyzed about 1,163 cases of drug intoxications visited to emergency room or admitted in the department of internal medicine of National Medical Center, Seoul, Korea, during recent 5 years from Jan. 1971 to Aug. 1975 and following results were obtained.
1) From Jan. 1971 to Aug. 1975, total number of cases of acute drug intoxication was 1,163 which is 3. 6% of total patients of emergency room and among them 330 cases were admitted, which is 4.9% of total admission cases in dept. of internal medicine during the same period.
2) The most common drugs were unknown drugs, but it was only 21 cases in admission cases, the remainders were hypnotics, rodeniticides, organophosphate and miscellaneous drugs in order of frequency.
3) The overall sex incidence was 44% male to 56% female with female preponderance. Monthly incidence was highest in July. Higher frequency was observed in summer season. Annual incidence was not obviously increasing, but there is a increasing tendency in admission cases annually.
4) Most cases complained of impairment of consciousness. Vomiting, abdominal pain, convulsion and excessive secretion were frequently observed. Physical examination revealed increased pulse rate, elevation of temperature and blood pressure, and miosis of the pupils in large proportion of the cases. Such a symptoms and physical signs were more prominent in organophosphate intoxications. Leuk-ocytosis and other abnormal laboratory findings such as proteinuria glycosuria were also observed in nearly a half cases of various drug intoxications.
5) Mortality rate was most prominent in organophosphate intoxications (20.5%) and overall mortality rate of total cases was 11.5%.
6) Prognosis is highly related to various factors such as kind of drugs, amount of drugs ingested, duration of arrival to the hospital from the time of ingestion of drugs and. other supportive measures such as clean air way, tracheostomy, prevention of complications and proper administration of antidotes.
7) Complications were developed in 24% among 330 cases of admission cases, and one half of the complications were aspiration pneumonia.
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