Medical Toxicology Consultations and Mortality Among Patients With Poisonings in the PICU.

Importance: Poisonings are a leading cause of preventable mortality and morbidity among children. Pediatric poisonings are commonly managed in pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) and may require complex treatment and specialized evaluation. Physicians specializing in medical toxicology are trained to treat poisoned patients of all ages; however, they are not universally part of the medical staff across hospital systems.

Objective: To determine if there is a difference in mortality and length of stay for patients with toxicological exposures who receive a medical toxicology consultation.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This is a secondary analysis of an ongoing, cross-sectional registry of patients admitted to PICUs from January 2019 to June 2023 as part of the Virtual Pediatric System (VPS), a database of PICU admissions across 135 medical sites in the US. Patients with toxicological exposure who were admitted to PICUs that participate in the VPS database were included. Data analysis occurred from May to August 2024.

Exposures: Medical toxicology consultations.

Main Outcomes And Measures: The primary outcome was mortality in the PICU and in the hospital overall. Secondary outcomes were length of stay in the PICU and in the hospital. Multilevel models were used to assess associations of toxicology consultations with the primary and secondary outcomes.

Results: There were a total of 52 836 patients with toxicological exposures (29 867 aged 12 to <21 years [56.5%]; 29 401 female [55.6%]), including 2857 (5.4%) patients with medical toxicology consultations and 49 979 (94.6%) without a consultation. Patients who received medical toxicology consultations had similar risk of mortality at baseline, as measured by the Pediatric Risk of Mortality, compared with those without consultations. After adjusting for severity of illness, poisoning type, and other covariates, medical toxicology consultations were associated with 64% lower odds of death in the PICU (adjusted odds ratio, 0.36; 95% CI, 0.20 to 0.63) and 61% lower odds of mortality at any time during the hospitalization (aOR, 0.39; 95% CI, 0.24 to 0.64). Additionally, medical toxicology consultations were associated with a 15% reduced PICU length of stay (log estimate, -0.16; 95% CI, -0.21 to -0.11) and 10% reduced hospital length of stay (log estimate, -0.10; 95% CI, -0.14 to -0.06) after adjusting for all covariates and differences across hospital sites.

Conclusions And Relevance: In this study of patients with toxicological exposures requiring PICU care, having a medical toxicology consultation was associated with lower mortality and shorter LOS compared with not having a consultation, which suggests that medical toxicology consultations may provide life-saving treatment, particularly for the most severe poisonings in the PICU.