Emergency Department Visits due to Medication Overdose in a Finnish University Hospital

Basic Clin Pharmacol Toxicol. 2025 Jun;136(6):e70053. doi: 10.1111/bcpt.70053.

ABSTRACT

There are no recent reports from the Nordic countries describing emergency department (ED) visits due to medication overdose. All patients visiting EDs of Tampere University Hospital, Finland, with ICD-10 codes T36-T50.9 during the year of 2021 were included in this study. A total of 803 ED visits by 631 individual patients were identified, comprising 0.7% of all ED visits in 2021. The intention of the overdose was self-harm in 70%, inebriation in 17% and other in 13% of the visits. The mean age of the patients was 35 (range 1-95) years, and 63% were female. In 52% of the visits, the patient had taken more than one medication. Benzodiazepines were involved in 40% of the visits, followed by antipsychotics (28%), antidepressants (19%), paracetamol (15%) and opiates (13%). Twenty-six percent of the patients were admitted to the intensive care or high-dependency care unit, but there were no overdose-related in-hospital deaths. The overall 1-year mortality rate after an overdose was 2.8%. The intention of a medication overdose was most often self-harm, followed by inebriation. Over half of the overdoses were multidrug overdoses, and psychoactive medications were predominantly used. There were no in-hospital deaths related to medication overdoses.

PMID:40326222 | DOI:10.1111/bcpt.70053