Iron Poisoning and Prevalence of Symptoms

Introduction: Iron is an essential element for normal cell metabolism, but in excess quantities is highly cytotoxic, and even lethal. Iron poisoning is a tragedy repeated many times in the world. Iron tablets are particularly tempting to young children because they look like candy. Iron overdose in adults is typically a suicide attempt.Materials and Methods: The present study is a descriptive-analytic study based on hospital information, that was conducted among the patients affected with iron poisoning admitted to Razi hospital (a referral medical setting for poisoning treatment in southwest Iran) during 2007- 2013. Patient information has been extracted and inserted in the inquiry form and data were analyzed by SPSS software.Results: In this study, Forty-seven patients (94.2%) were female patients and 5 of them were pregnant. Postoperative nausea and vomiting (50%) are two of the most common side effects. In this study, 5 patients (9.6%) Deferoxamine received. )25%( of patients used vitamins simultaneously with iron. The Serum levels of iron in 3 patients (5.8%) was 300 μg/dL. Suicide (96.2%) was the most common cause of iron poisoning deaths.Discussion and Conclusion: All Patients with symptoms of less than 6 hours duration, there was clinical significance to get Deferoxamine. In our present study, nausea and vomiting was the most common symptom in all patients. The greatest proportion of suicides due to poisoning occurred among 21-25 years age groups. Most patients were hospitalized between 6-24 hours.

کلیدواژه ها:

Poisoning ، iron ، Deferoxamine