A comparison of poisoned patients at military and veterans administration hospitals

The state of California is home to greater than 168,000 active-duty military personnel, more than any other state in the United States of America. Additionally, there are more than 2 million military veterans in California, many of whom utilise Veterans Administration hospitals for their healthcare. Little, if any, has been published in the medical literature regarding poisoning in these potentially unique patient populations. It is not known whether the active-duty population differs from the veteran population in terms of frequency and types of toxicologic exposures. We sought to compare poisoned patients at military and Veterans Administration hospitals that were reported to the California Poison Control System in order to determine whether any differences exist between the two populations with respect to frequency or types of exposures, as well as age and gender distributions.