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

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.