Clinical Effects of Activated Charcoal Unavailability on Treatment Outcomes for Oral Drug Poisoned Patients

Table 5

Multiple-drug ingestion and clinical outcomes compared between charcoal-available and charcoal-unavailable periods.

	Charcoal-available period				Charcoal -unavailable period	p-value^†
	Non-Charcoal	Charcoal	Total	P
Aspiration pneumonia
single drug	11 (9.9%)	8 (13.3%)	19 (11.1%)	0.497	11 (10.8%)	0.933
multiple drug	17 (10.6%)	5 (6.2%)	22 (9.1%)	0.263	10 (8.4%)	0.829
Intubation
single drug	8 (7.2%)	9 (15.0%)	17 (9.9%)	0.104	8 (7.8%)	0.561
multiple drug	9 (5.6%)	9 (11.1%)	18 (7.4%)	0.122	8 (6.7%)	0.805
Vasopressor use
single drug	5 (4.5%)	1 (1.7%)	6 (3.5%)	0.666	7 (6.9%)	0.245
multiple drug	12 (7.5%)	4 (4.9%)	16 (6.6%)	0.588	4 (3.4%)	0.204
Mortality
single drug	3 (2.7%)	0 (0%)	3 (1.8%)	0.553	1 (1.0%)	>0.999
multiple drug	4 (2.5%)	1 (1.2%)	5 (2.1%)	0.667	1 (0.8%)	0.668
Hospital admission
single drug	49 (44.1%)	30 (50.0%)	79 (46.2%)	0.464	33 (32.4%)	0.024
multiple drug	63 (39.1%)	37 (45.7%)	100 (41.3%)	0.329	33 (24.8%)	0.012
ICU admission
single drug	2 (1.8%)	7 (11.7%)	9 (5.3%)	0.010	16 (15.7%)	0.004
multiple drug	10 (6.2%)	5 (6.2%)	15 (6.2%)	0.991	14 (11.8%)	0.067
Number of patients
single drug	111	60	171		102
multiple drug	161	81	242		119

GCS: Glasgow Coma Scale; ICU: intensive care unit.
noncharcoal and charcoal.
^†Between charcoal-available and charcoal-unavailable period.