[Social conditions of suicidal poisonings]. / Spoleczne uwarunkowania zatruc samobójczych.

The paper presents the results of a study of social conditioning of suicidal poisonings conducted in the years 1994-1996. The study was of the case-control study type and covered 542 intoxicated patients treated in the Toxicology Department of the Medical Faculty of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. The studied population consisted of 323 patients poisoned in suicidal attempts (the studied group) and 219 accidentally poisoned (the control group). The objective of the study was to determine social conditioning of suicidal poisonings. It has been found that the risk of suicidal attempt was 2.3 times higher among divorced or separated people; 2.2 times higher among those, who had recently lost their jobs; 2.4 times higher among people having financial problems while nearly twice lower among individuals having more children.

[Suicidal self poisoning with disulfiram in a 15-year old boy with resulting encephalopathy]. / Samobójcze ostre zatrucie disulfiramem u 15-letniego chlopca z nastepowa encefalopatia.

Acute intentional overdoses of disulfiram (app. 30 g) is reported in 15-years-old boy. The neurological disturbances as nystagmus, coma, seizures and than impairment of memory and perception were dominated in the clinical picture. During MRI examination the areas of different signal from corpus callosum were detected which can be referred to focus of demyelinisation. The patient recovered and was discharged from the hospital after 30 days. Neuropsychological examinations have suggested dysfunction of CNS. The control MRI examination 90 days later, did not reveal any pathological changes in the brain.

[Acute poisoning by carbon monoxide from personal examinations 1966-1985]. / Ostre zatrucia tlenkiem wegla z badan wlasnych w latach 1966-1985.

Acute poisoning by carbon monoxide (CO) in Kraków takes the third place after drug and alcohol poisoning. When natural gas came into use, the incidence of acute CO poisoning decreased profoundly. But mortality rate of this poisoning can still tell how severe it is. The authors presented the relation between the incidence rate, complications and mortality rate of CO poisoning and the source of this gas emission. 243 subjects were treated in the intensive Toxicological Care Unit from 1966 to 1985, and during the first 10 years lighting gas was the main cause of the poisoning but during the second the poisoning was mainly caused by CO produced by incomplete combustion of some components of natural gas. This 20-year period was characterized by routine treatment. The change of CO emission source introduced in 1976 had not radical statistical influence on the clinical picture, complications, mortality of CO poisoning.