Hospital usage of TOXBASE in Great Britain: Temporal trends in accesses 2008 to 2015

Hum Exp Toxicol. 2018 Nov;37(11):1207-1214. doi: 10.1177/0960327118759405. Epub 2018 Feb 20.

Abstract

Aim: To examine temporal trends in accesses to the UK's National Poison Information Service's TOXBASE database in Britain.

Methods: Generalized additive models were used to examine trends in daily numbers of accesses to TOXBASE from British emergency departments between January 2008 and December 2015. Day-of-the-week, seasonality and long-term trends were analysed at national and regional levels (Wales, Scotland and the nine English Government Office Regions).

Results: The long-term trend in daily accesses increases from 2.8 (95% confidence interval (CI): 2.6-3.0) per user on 1 January 2008 to 4.6 (95% CI: 4.3-4.9) on 31 December 2015, with small but significant differences in population-corrected accesses by region ( p < 0.001). There are statistically significant seasonal and day of the week patterns ( p < 0.001) across all regions. Accesses are 18% (95% CI: 14-22%) higher in summer than in January and at the weekend compared to weekdays in all regions; there is a 7.5% (95% CI: 6.1-8.9%) increase between Friday and Sunday.

Conclusions: There are consistent in-year patterns in access to TOXBASE indicating potential seasonal patterns in poisonings in Britain, with location-dependent rates of usage. This novel descriptive work lays the basis for future work on the interaction of TOXBASE use with emergency admission of patients into hospital.

Keywords: Poisons information; epidemiology; regional variation; seasonality; time trends.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study

MeSH terms

  • Databases, Factual / trends*
  • Emergency Service, Hospital / trends*
  • Humans
  • Poison Control Centers / trends*
  • Poisoning / diagnosis
  • Poisoning / epidemiology*
  • Poisoning / therapy
  • Seasons*
  • Time Factors
  • United Kingdom / epidemiology