[The comparative analysis of acute poisoning characteristics between cities and rural areas in Guangxi]

To compare the acute-poisoning characteristics between city and rural areas of Guangxi Province in order to provide clinical data for the formation of treatment strategies of acute poisoning in Guangxi.

Data of acute poisoning patients as treated in 36 municipal and 12 county hospitals, and also 15 rural clinics in 11 cities of Guangxi during 2005 to 2009 were collected and analyzed according to poisoning population, poisoning site, poisoning process, and poisoning degree.

By analysing 3678 and 2153 cases of acute poisoning patients in rural and urban areas, the gender [χ (2) = 5.53, P < 0.05], age [χ (2) = 21.04, P < 0.01], professions [χ (2) = 3156.83, P < 0.01], poisoning site [χ (2) = 429.26, P < 0.01], poisoning cause [χ (2) = 363.06, P < 0.01], poison variety [χ (2) = 1713.12, P < 0.01], poisoning degree [χ (2) = 35.25, P < 0.01] were shown to be significantly different between rural and urban areas. In the rural areas, poisoning occurred predominantly in male (48.10% vs. 44.91%), age between 20-60 years (69.39% vs. 67.53%) and over 61 years old (11.17% vs. 8.69%), farmers by occupation (74.84% vs. 2.79%), home (80.64% vs. 78.07%), sites of labor (11.83% vs. 3.07%) and other sites (4.08% vs. 2.97%), and the chief causes were professional (3.10% vs. 1.30%), taken by mistake (21.85% vs. 20.91%), homicide (0.30% vs. 0.28%), and suicide (39.07% vs. 18.77%), and by pesticide (60.94% vs. 12.13%), plant (7.08% vs. 2.88%) and animal poisons (7.73% vs. 6.56%), belonging to severe poisoning (25.86% vs. 19.04%) were higher than those in town. In the town, poisoning occurred predominantly in female (55.09% vs. 51.90%), age below 19 years old (23.78% vs. 19.44%), unemployed (33.35% vs. 13.76%), student (17.53% vs. 8.43%), industrial workers (31.95% vs. 2.69%), executives (10.84% vs. 0.22%) and other professional (3.53% vs. 0.05%); occurred in schools (8.78% vs. 0.82%), restaurants (5.48% vs. 1.55%), place of entertainment (1.63% vs. 1.09%), by accidental (52.23% vs. 31.27%), therapeutic (4.46% vs. 2.56%), and other reasons (2.04% vs. 1.85%); by chemicals (33.19% vs. 8.55%), medicines (24.31% vs. 9.12%), and other types of poison (20.92% vs. 6.59%); light and medium degree of poisoning (44.87% vs. 41.22%, 36.09% vs. 32.93%) were higher than those in rural areas.

Regarding the acute poisoning in Guangxi, the composition of population, the poisoning sites and causes, the types of poisons, the poisoning degree are distinctly different between urban and rural areas.