[Death after earlier deliberate self-poisoning. A 10-year material from an intensive care unit]

In order to describe the survival after deliberate self-poisoning we followed up all patients discharged from an intensive care unit over a ten year period (1979-1988), where admission had been due to deliberate self-poisoning. The acute lethality has been described in a previous publication. Among 1487 patients discharged from the intensive care unit a total of 227 deaths were registered (median observation time: 55 months). According to national lifetables the expected number of deaths was 32. The deaths were classified as natural (44%), suicide (39%), accidental (9%) or other (8%). Among patients who committed suicide there were some significant (p < 0.01) characteristics: the majority of the patients were under 50 years of age, with an observation time of under two years and a history of prior psychiatric illness. The suicide rate was 1.3% per year of observation. We conclude that survivors of deliberate self-poisoning will remain at high risk of dying (especially suicide) in the future, and that useful clinical predictors of fatal outcome have yet to be determined.