Intoxicaciones inadvertidas por monóxido de carbono: una epidemia oculta

Abstract

Some authors say that there is a high number of carbon monoxide poisoning undetected by medical doctors. That means an important health problem. To support this hypothesis we selected an emergency department where we know the number of carbon monoxide poisoning detected in the past. We studied a group of people who came to the emergency department of the Hospital do Salnés in February 2013. We selected 1501 patients using a simple random sampling system. In each of the patients in the sample we measured the carboxyhemoglobin using the pulse co oximetry. The purpose was to detect all poisoned patients. The number of carbon monoxide poisoning detected in the random sample was 10. That means 0.7% (± 0.34% p <0.05) of all the people who went to the emergency department in February. That also means that the number of carbon monoxide poisoning expected for the study population would be 18 (8.8 to 27.1) This number was much higher than the number detected in the ordinary work of emergency physicians during the past ten years, in the month of February and in the same emergency department. They detected an average annual 1.3 poisonings (SD: 2.8). We conclude that the number of undetected carbon monoxide poisoning is very high.