Awareness in the management of children who ingested corrosive substances
Tülin Öztaş1
, Muhammet Asena2, Salim Bilici1
1Sağlık Bilimleri Üniversitesi Gazi Yaşargil Eğitim ve Araştırma Hastanesi, Çocuk Cerrahi Anabilim Dalı, Diyarbakır, Türkiye
2Sağlık Bilimleri Üniversitesi Gazi Yaşargil Eğitim ve Araştırma Hastanesi, Çocuk Sağlığı ve Hastalıkları Anabilim Dalı, Diyarbakır, Türkiye
Keywords: Corrosive substances, children, child abuse and neglect
Abstract
Objective: The purpose of the study is to evaluate the knowledge levels of the doctors about the management of the children that ingested corrosive substances and to constitute awareness in order to prevent the problems that occur during the evaluation of the cases.
Method: A total of 126 physicians, who were working at emergency services of the secondary and tertiary care hospitals and primary health center of the city center and districts of Diyarbakır were included in the study. The study was conducted through survey that was composed of two sections. In the first section, demographic characteristics of the participants were evaluated. In the second section, participants were asked questions that evaluated the emergency approaches to the patients who ingested corrosive substances.
Results: The participants were emergency medicine physicians (n=19: 15.1%), pediatricians (n=25: 19.9%), pediatric residents (n=36: 28.5%) and general practitioners (n=46: 36.5%). The 57.1% of the doctors declared that they had requested blood gas analysis, hemogram, chest and abdominal x-ray from the patients who ingested corrosive substances. While 40% of the doctors expressed that they didn’t have enough knowledge about treatment. 23% of the doctors stated that they had called the poison call center for the asymptomatic cases that ingested bleach. Whereas 31.8% of the doctors reported that they had referred the patients to the departments of pediatric surgery. Still 78.5% of the doctors stated that they evaluated the thinner as corrosive substance, and 7.9% of the doctors declared that they hadn’t prepared forensic report about the cases. Besides, 17.5% of them stated that they hadn’t evaluated these cases as child abuse or negligence.
Conclusion: The findings of this study suggest that there are different approaches towards the cases that ingested corrosive substances among the doctors who encountered those cases for the first time, besides the fact that there is a tremendous lack of knowledge about the subject and high rate of consultation to poison call center.
Atıf vermek için: Öztaş T, Asena M, Bilici S. Koroziv madde içen çocukların yönetiminde farkındalık. Çoc. Cer. Derg. 2019;33(2):39-44.