[Scorpion stings outbreaks in recently constructed urban dwellings inhabitants]

Scorpion stings are unfrequent in Chile. Most of cases occur in rural areas during the warm season. Clinical manifestations have a low to moderate intensity and consist in local pain and inflammation, sometimes associated with headache and hyperthermia. Two autbreaks of scorpion stings--affecting six and five adult residents (18-42 years old) of recently built urban dwelling complexes--have been recorded in Chile in summertime of 1957 and 1998. The first took place in the town of Maipú and the second in Villa Alborada sites respectively 10 and 150 km South of the city of Santiago. The Maipú dwelling complex was constituted by 112 one story houses in which lived 504 people. In Villa Alborada live 1,050 persons distributed in 158 apartments, 86 of which are in the main floor and in 26 of these last the occupants have observed scorpions inside. All the 11 cases occurred into the dwelling: four when sleeping at night, three performing different activities (trying to find a tool, searching a kee, housekeeping), two when putting their shoes, and two walking with bare feet in dormitory. In all the cases the causative scorpion was observed, captured or destroyed. Identification of six specimens from Maipú corresponded to Brachistoternus ehrenbergi and of two from Villa Alborada to Bothriurus borrelianus. All the patients presented mild to moderate symptomatology. Treatment consisted basically in oral antihistamanic and/or antinflammatory tablets. Recovery was observed within one to seven days with a mean of three days. Prophylactic measures consisted in health education and physical destruction of scorpions in Maipú and insecticide spraying on floors of basement apartments and surrounding areas in Villa Alborada. Though the majority of accidents by scorpion stings happens in rural areas, also may occur in urban areas--rural in the near past--where dwellings have been constructed in fields which in not to much preterit times constituted the habitat of the referred arthropod, phenomenom that have occurred in summertime in the two dwelling complexes described in the present communication.