To describe current trends in nonopioid substance exposures and associated outcomes among teenagers nationwide.
In this cross-sectional study, we used 2010-2015 data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers' National Poison Data System and Poisson tests to document trends in the rate of calls to poison control centers involving adolescents stratified by sex, exposures by substance category, proportion of intentional exposures, and severity of exposures.
The number of calls per 1000 persons increased from 5.7 to 6.8 for teenage girls and decreased from 4.7 to 4.3 for boys. Reported exposures to prescription and over-the-counter medications and illicit street drugs increased between 24% and 73%, and reported opioid exposures decreased by 16%. Among teenage girls, intentional exposures increased from 57% to 68%, with cases increasingly managed in health care facilities and more likely to result in worse health outcomes.
The increase in intentional nonopioid substance exposures among teenage girls, with serious and potentially life-threatening consequences, is a matter of serious concern. Similar trends were not observed among teenage boys.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 10 May 2018.
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#24,461,921
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Outputs from Journal of Pediatrics
#12,690
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#260,999
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Outputs of similar age from Journal of Pediatrics
#163
of 214 outputs
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