Triage in Emergency departments requires emergency doctors to make rapid decisions based on their knowledge and experiences. Triage of patients is critical to patient safety, yet no clear information exists by the utility of initial vital signs and conscious levelin identifying critically ill acutely organophosphate (OP) poisoned patients. The objective of this study is to determine the relationship between triage vital signs and conscious level in predicting outcome of acutely organophosphate poisoned patients.A retrospective and prospective study was carried out on 200 patients of acute OP poisoning admitted to the Poison Control Center (PCC), Ain Shams University Hospitals. Information including vital signs and Glasgow coma scale (GCS) on admission after obtaining the permission of the director of PCC and the regional ethics committee was collected from the sheets and computerized data base of the patients, an informed written consent has been obtained from each patient or from his/her caregiver for inclusion in the prospective part of the study. The results were revised, coded and organized for statistical analysis.
The study results revealed 180 (90%) patients discharged and 20 (10%) patients died. The study also showed that 8% of patients had fever, 9.5% had tachycardia, 1.5% had bradycardia, 5% had hypotension, 2% had hypertension, 2.5% had tachypnea and 3.5% showed bradypnea. Also 89% of patients had GCS > 8, while 11% of patients had GCS ≤ 8. The study showed statistically significant difference between discharged and died patients as regards heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, body temperature and GCS.
It could be concluded that heart rate, respiratory rate and coma scale can serve as easily measurable tools for outcome prediction in acutely OP poisoned patients. From the previous results, our study recommends to use these parameters to help emergency physicians to quickly detect poisoned patients with poor outcomes.