Eventos tóxicos envolvendo medicamentos notificados em um centro de assistência toxicológica do Estado do Ceará

Abstract

Medicines play a pivotal role in health systems and although they constitute the main therapeutic strategy in healing and diseases control its use is not risk free, often being related to toxic events in humans and occupying usually the first place among the involved toxic agents. This study aimed to characterize the toxic events involving drugs attended and reported in a Toxicological Assistance Center of Ceará between January 1 and December 31 of 2013. The data was collected from the Surveillance Data Collection Form and the variables analyzed were gender, age, occupation / profession, city of residence, motivational circumstance, evaluation and outcome of intoxication, drug involved, among others. 296 forms related to such occurrences were analyzed. Most patients were female (60.14%), aged between 20 and 29 years (27.04%) and residents in Fortaleza (70.61%). Student was the occupation / profession referred with the highest frequency (22.64%). Most events occurred in urban areas (89.87%), with the residence as the main place where these events occurred (93.23%). The principal motivational circumstance was suicide attempt (64.50%), followed by individual accident (26.70%). The vast majority of cases occurred by acute / single exposure (99.32%), with 98.98% referring to oral exposure and the attendance care was performed within 3 and 6 hours after exposure to the toxic agent (27.03%). In most events only a single drug was involved (51.67%) and the psychoactive drugs was the most used, with haloperidol (15.54%) as the most frequently reported drug. Most events were classified as mild poisoning (38.18%) and only one death was recorded (0.34%). It is noticed that poisonings involving drugs are an important public health problem. However, the epidemiological research about poisoning by drugs in the state and in the country are still an area with many gaps to be filled. It is clear the need of studies to better investigate the roles of mental disorders, gender and the influence of socio-cultural aspects in choosing the means to attempt and suicide, in order to support properly the development of specific goals aiming to intervene, prevent and thereby reduce the occurrence of such events.