An administrative dataset can show which poisonings hospitals reported during a period. It takes a different dataset to determine how many unique people were poisoned or what happened outside the hospital system.
How the Polish study counted records
Świderska and colleagues analyzed 254,425 poisoning admissions reported to Poland’s National Health Fund from 2009 through 2011. The study used ICD-10 diagnoses. Ethanol accounted for 121,874 admissions, and benzodiazepines accounted for 10,340. The study covered reports from different hospital units rather than relying only on specialist toxicology units.
Why the unit matters in testimony
Describe these figures as coded admissions. A person can have multiple admissions, and a poisoning episode that never generated a hospital admission falls outside the study’s scope. Where a report uses these findings to describe a local case, check which service made the diagnosis, what laboratory or clinical evidence supports it, and whether the proposed comparison uses admissions, people, or laboratory confirmations.
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