Objectives: Carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is one of the most frequent causes of fatal poisoning worldwide. Few studies have explored the mortality trends of CO poisoning grouped by age and gender, at the regional, national and global levels. We therefore aimed to determine the pattern of CO poisoning mortality, as well as temporal trends at all levels.
Design: A cross-sectional survey design was used in this study.
Setting: CO poisoning data collected from the Global Burden of Diseases (GBDs), from 1990 to 2017, was arranged by sex, age, region and country. In addition, we used human development index data at the national level from the World Bank.
Participants: We collected over 100 000 information on CO poisoning mortality between 1990 and 2017, derived from the GBD study in 2017.
Main outcomes and measures: We have calculated the estimated annual percentage changes in CO poisoning age-standardised mortality rate (ASR), by sex and age at different regions and countries to quantify the temporal trends in CO poisoning ASR.
Results: Globally, death cases of CO poisoning decreased 7.2% from 38 210 in 1990 to 35 480 in 2017. The overall ASR decreased by an average of 1.83% (95% CI 2.10% to 1.56%) per year in this period. This decreasing pattern was heterogeneous across ages, regions and countries. The most pronounced decreases were generally observed in countries with a high sociodemographic index, including Estonia, South Korea and Puerto Rico.
Conclusions: Current prevention strategies should be reoriented, and much more targeted and specific strategies should be established in some countries to forestall CO poisoning.
Keywords: epidemiology; public health; toxicology.
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