The City Children's Hospital said it has just received 3 sisters including V. (10 years old), H. (9 years old) and Â. (7 years old), transferred from a local hospital with a diagnosis of food poisoning and blood clotting disorder.
According to the family, about a week before being hospitalized, all 3 children were fed field mouse meat prepared by the family. By the 7th day, they successively experienced abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea and many bruises scattered on their bodies.
Baby Â. had more severe symptoms with vomiting blood, red urine and bloating. Test results at the local hospital showed that all 3 children had obvious blood clotting disorders, with PT over 20 seconds and INR over 3, and were then transferred to the City Children's Hospital.
Here, doctors re-examined the medical history and suspected poisoning from super warfarin rat poison. This is a group of vitamin K antagonists with long-lasting effects, which can exist in the body for many weeks to months and cause prolonged blood clotting disorders.
The children were treated with high doses of vitamin K1, monitored daily blood clotting function and adjusted accompanying disorders. Baby Â. had severe bleeding, including bilateral pleural effusion, bloody urine, vomiting blood and hematoma around the kidneys, retroperitoneal cavity. The child had to have endotracheal intubation, mechanical ventilation, blood transfusion and fresh blood plasma frozen.
After nearly 3 weeks of treatment, the health condition of all 3 children gradually stabilized, no longer showing bleeding, blood clotting indicators improved. Baby Â. was discontinued from the ventilator. The children continued to be supplemented with vitamin K1 and monitored after treatment because super warfarin could remain in the body for a long time.
According to BSCKII Nguyen Minh Tien, Deputy Director of Children's Hospital of Ho Chi Minh City, vitamin K antagonists such as warfarin and super warfarin can cause serious blood clotting disorders. Among them, super warfarin substances such as brodifacoum, bromadiolone, coumatetralyl and difenacoum are often used in rat poison, which can cause blood clotting disorders to last for weeks to months.
Doctors note that rat poisoning has many groups of substances with different manifestations. Some types can cause damage to the liver, kidneys, heart, lungs or nervous system. Therefore, when children have abnormal symptoms after eating food of unknown origin, especially vomiting, abdominal pain, bleeding, abnormal bruises or bloody urine, families need to take children to a medical facility for examination.
In the above case, parents need to pay special attention to choosing safe food, with clear origins and controlled. Children should not be allowed to use food of unknown origin, because the risk of poisoning can be very difficult to recognize with the naked eye," Dr. Tien advised.
