Citation

Yu HY, Lin JL, Fu JF, Lin JH, Liu SH, Weng CH, Huang WH, Chen KH, Hsu CW, Yen TH. Springerplus 2013; 2: 505.

Affiliation

Department of Nephrology and Division of Clinical Toxicology, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, 199 Tung Hwa North Road, Taipei, 105 Taiwan ; College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1186/2193-1801-2-505

PMID

24130963

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Rodenticide poisoning remains a major public health problem in Asian countries. Nevertheless, very few data are available in world literature regarding the outcomes of these patients. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the clinical outcomes of rodenticide poisonings in our hospital and to compare these data with published reports from other international poison centers.

FINDINGS: We retrospectively examined the records of 20 patients with rodenticide poisoning (8 brodifacoum, 12 bromadiolone) who were referred to Chang Gung Memorial Hospital between 2000 and 2011. It was found that most of the rodenticide patients were middle-aged adults. Both genders were equally affected and many patients had a past history of major depressive disorder or schizophrenia. Nevertheless, patients with bromadiolone were referred significantly sooner than patients with brodifacoum poisoning (0.1 ± 0.1 versus 5.5 ± 10.5, P < 0.001). Furthermore, it was found that patients with brodifacoum suffered higher incidences of ecchymosis (50.0% versus 0%, P = 0.006) and hematuria (50.0% versus 0%, P = 0.006) than patients with bromadiolone poisoning. Laboratory analysis also demonstrated a poorer hemostatic profile of patients with brodifacoum [prothrombin time (PT), international normalized ratio (INR), 4.3 ± 4.8 versus 1.0 ± 0.1, P = 0.032; PT prolongation, 50.0% versus 0%, P = 0.006; activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT) prolongation, 50.0% versus 0%, P = 0.006] than patients with bromadiolone poisoning. At the end of analysis, no patient died of the poisoning.

CONCLUSION: The favorable outcome (zero mortality rate) is comparable to the published reports from other international poison centers. Further studies are warranted.

Language: en