Case management of adult patients with acute poisoning in a university-based emergency department to determine the factors that affect duration of hospital stay was assessed. In this survey, data were obtained for the period between January 1, 1997 and December 31, 2002 at the emergency department (ED). Case analyses of 2229 patients older than 14 years of age were reviewed. Of all patients, 725 (32.5%) were male, 801 (35.9%) were younger than 20, and 540 (24.2%) were older than 30 years. Mean ages of patients were 29.3+/-13.2 for the males and 23.8+/-9.6 for the females (P<.001). During the study, the greatest number of patients were admitted in May (11.0%). Suicidal poisoning was the observed etiology in the majority of cases (76.4%). Moreover, the mortality rate due to poisoning was 3.9%. Drug ingestion was the most frequent means of poisoning (59.0%), followed by pesticides (19.0%). The rate of poisoning with multiple drugs has declined over time, whereas the rate owing to psychoactive drugs has increased markedly. The mean length of hospital stay was 2.9+/-1.8 days and the proportion of patients who stayed for longer than 2 days was 44.3%. The mean length of hospital stay was longer for males, those older than 30 years, those who had been poisoned unintentionally, and for confused and unconscious patients and those who had arrived to ED more than 2 hours after the event. This study suggests that morbidity for adult patients with poisoning varied by sex, age, and season. Length of hospital stay was affected by sex, age, arrival time to ED, mode of transport, severity of poisoning, and type of agent.

Caustic products are responsible for the most serious cases of poisoning, which are always emergency cases. In this paper, we review demographic features and endoscopic results of the patients admitted to a university emergency department with a history of caustic substance ingestion between January 2000 and June 2003. Thirty-seven patients were included in this study. Twenty-one of the patients were female and 16 were male. The mean age of the patients was 30.9 +/- 14.7 years. The agents included sodium hypochlorite in 24 patients and hydrochloric acid in 13 patients. All the patients ingested these agents orally. The mean interval time of admission to emergency department after ingestion of caustic agent was 5.4 +/- 5.6 hours. Endoscopy was attempted in 37 patients. Endoscopic results were as follows: grade 0 in 8 (21.6%) patients, grade 1 in 17 (45.9%) patients, grade 2a in 5 (13.5%) patients, and grade 2b in 7 (18.9%) patients. We believe that early signs and symptoms after caustic substance ingestion are not consistent with the extent of damage, and endoscopy is the only reliable method to assess injury. It is important that efforts should be made to educate the public about the dangers of caustic substances so that their threat may be diminished.

In patients with ACS emergency, it is recommended that decompressive laparotomy to be performed even if the IAP falls below 25 mmHg. For patients with IAP levels higher than 25 mmHg, the IAP should be meticulously brought below the cutoff level during the postoperative period.

Background: Onychomycosis has a high prevalance among immunocompromised patients such as diabetics and hemodialysis patients. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of onychomycosis among hemodialysis patients with and without diabetes mellitus, and to find out the factors likely to be associated with the development of onychomycosis among hemodialysis patients.

Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre-including this research content-immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

Ecbalium elaterium, known as the wild or squirting cucumber, is a hairy perennial herbaceous vine of the Cucurbitaceae family, endemic to the Mediterranean region. All parts of the plant are toxic, particularly the gherkin-like fruits. It is frequently used in the treatment of sinusitis by nasal aspiration in some parts of the Mediterranean. The studies regarding to Ecbalium elaterium, argue that it has an anti-inflammatory characteristic. Two cases of uvular oedema have been ascribed to the undiluted use of this substance. Since they can threaten life, similar cases arising with the improper use of herbals should not be ignored in the emergency department. In this paper we present a life-threatening uvular angioedema caused by nasal aspiration of undiluted juice of squirting cucumber.

No abstract

In this article, subarachnoidal hemorrhage developing in a case with Covid-19-related pneumonia was evaluated. In the presence of respiratory system infection signs such as cough and weakness in patient who present with sudden loss of consciousness, performing lung imaging as well as performing brain computerized tomography scan can allow the detection of an underlying Covid-19 infection.