Incidence of poisoning and characteristics of patients in British Columbia by patient disposition, 2016
| Characteristic | Patient disposition, no. (%) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deaths n = 1224 (3%) | Hospital admission* n = 4657 (10%) | ED† n = 13 764 (30%) | Ambulance‡ n = 4135 (9%) | BC DPIC§ n = 21 411 (47%) | Total¶ n = 45 191 (100%) | |
| Sex | ||||||
| Male | 920 (75) | 1921 (41) | 9256 (67) | 2090 (51) | 10 221 (48) | 24 408 (54) |
| Female | 304 (25) | 2736 (59) | 4508 (33) | 1136 (27) | 10 974 (51) | 19 658 (43) |
| Age group, yr | ||||||
| < 15 | 0 | 237 (5) | 581 (4) | 94 (2) | 11 885 (56) | 12 797 (28) |
| 15–24 | 127 (10) | 1074 (23) | 2772 (20) | 543 (13) | 1200 (6) | 5716 (13) |
| 25–64 | 1031 (84) | 2765 (59) | 8668 (63) | 2118 (51) | 2642 (12) | 17 224 (38) |
| 65–74 | 47 (4) | 317 (7) | 941 (7) | 264 (6) | 484 (2) | 2053 (5) |
| > 75 | 19 (2) | 264 (6) | 803 (6) | 206 (5) | 526 (2) | 1818 (4) |
Note: BC DPIC = British Columbia Drug and Poison Information Centre, ED = emergency department.
↵* Excludes in-hospital deaths.
↵† Excludes patients admitted to the hospital.
↵‡ Patients not transported to the hospital. There were 909 (22%) ambulance patients with missing information on sex and 910 (23%) for age group.
↵§ Patients who had called the BC DPIC and who were not seen by the ambulance or transferred to the hospital. There were 218 (1%) BC DPIC patients with missing information on sex and 4674 (22%) for age group.
↵¶ There were 1125 (3%) of all patients with missing information on sex and 5583 (12%) with missing information on age.