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

Table 6

Time delay from drug ingestion to ED visit and clinical outcome between charcoal-available and charcoal-unavailable periods.

	Charcoal-available period				Charcoal-unavailable period	p-value^†
	Non-charcoal	Charcoal	Total	p
Aspiration pneumonia
within 1hr	5 (7.6%)	3 (6.8%)	8 (7.3%)	1	5 (7.8%)	0.818
over 1hr	23 (11.2%)	10 (10.3%)	33 (10.9%)	0.823	16 (10.2%)	>0.999
Intubation
within 1hr	6 (9.1%)	5 (11.4%)	11 (10%)	0.015	3 (4.7%)	0.214
over 1hr	11 (5.3%)	13 (13.4%)	24 (7.9%)	0.697	13 (8.3%)	0.893
Vasopressor use
within 1hr	1 (1.5%)	0 (0%)	1 (0.9%)	1	3 (4.7%)	0.141
over 1hr	16 (7.8%)	5 (5.2%)	21 (6.9%)	0.404	8 (5.1%)	0.443
Mortality
within 1hr	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	NA	0 (0%)	N/A
over 1hr	7 (3.4%)	1 (1.0%)	8 (2.6%)	0.231	2 (1.3%)	0.506
Hospital admission
within 1hr	17 (25.8%)	20 (45.5%)	37 (33.6%)	0.339	15 (23.4%)	0.156
over 1hr	95 (46.1%)	47 (48.5%)	142 (46.9%)	0.171	51 (32.5%)	0.003
ICU admission
within 1hr	3 (4.5%)	4 (9.1%)	7 (6.4%)	0.434	7 (10.9%)	0.285
over 1hr	9 (4.4%)	8 (8.2%)	17 (5.6%)	0.171	23 (14.6%)	0.001
Number of patients
within 1hr	66	44	110		64
over 1hr	206	97	303		157

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