relationship of serum lead level in opium consuming patients with clinical and demographic symptoms: a retrospective study

Drug abuse and its complications and side effects are one of the big problems of the middle east, especially in islamic republic of iran. lead is a mutagen and carcinogen and it causes disruption of the body's enzymatic reactions, disruption of molecule synthesis, reduction of the life of red blood cells, kidney, heart and nerve complications, effects on the fetus, hallucinations, memory loss, nephropathy, brain and nerve damage, pain. it is in the device. drug providers may use lead during narcotics production to increase the weight of opium, leading to lead poisoning. the present study was conducted with the aim of epidemiologically investigating the clinical indicators of patients admitted to shahid beheshti hospital in babol due to lead poisoning. this is a retrospective descriptive cross-sectional study. census sampling was used to include the medical records of all patients who attended rouhani hospital and shahid beheshti hospital emergency departments in babol city, mazandaran province, iran due to lead poisoning in a 5-year period from 2016 to 2021. in order to describe variables, the mean and standard deviation were used for quantitative data. for qualitative data, frequency and percentage were used. to evaluate the relationship between variables, t-test and chi-square test were used. a p-value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. according to the findings, 44.2% of patients were older than 57 years; 62.5% lived in urban areas; 50% were unemployed; 88.3% were married, and 42.5% held a diploma. the mean serum lead level in patients was 74.8±20.22. a total of 52 patients (43.3%) had mild poisoning, 45% had moderate poisoning, and 11.7% of patients had severe poisoning. the obtained results showed a statistically significant relationship between lead poisoning severity and the age, education level, place of residence, history of previous poisoning and duration of narcotics use by patients (p-value<0.05). moreover, the results showed that there is a statistically significant relationship between serum lead level and abdominal pain, nausea, limb weakness and convulsions in patients (p-value <0.05). according to the results, measuring serum lead level in opium-addicted patients who attend the medical centers with clinical symptoms such as anemia, nephropathy, convulsions, limb weakness, fatigue and abdominal pain, can be a great help in poisoning diagnosis.