Adolescent Pharmaceutical Poisoning Surge Outpaces Adult Metrics as Regulators Lack Specific Product Data. A sharp 31.5% increase in pharmaceutical poisoning among adolescents aged 10 to 19 over a four-year period has exposed a critical blind spot in national health tracking, as current systems fail to identify the specific drugs causing the overdoses.
Data from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, provided to Representative So Byung-hoon of the Democratic Party and the National Assembly’s Health and Welfare Committee, shows that the number of teenagers treated for pharmaceutical poisoning rose from 1,761 in 2021 to 2,315 last year. This surge is nine times the 3.5% growth rate seen across all age groups during the same period, where total patients increased from 15,743 to 16,294. Male adolescent patients grew by 33.6% from 330 to 441, while female adolescent patients increased by 31% from 1,431 to 1,874. Furthermore, 90% of last year’s 2,315 teenage patients, totaling 2,084 individuals, required inpatient treatment.
Limitations of Current Health Insurance Claim Statistics
While health insurance claim data effectively tracks overall patient occurrence and trends regarding pharmaceutical poisoning, experts note significant limitations in identifying detailed abuse and misuse patterns. Specifically, the data cannot determine individual active ingredients, exact product names, or whether the substances involved were over-the-counter or prescription medications.
Call for a National Management System
의약품 중독을 일으킨 구체적인 약물과 경로, 원인조차 파악하지 못하고 있다면 어떤 약물을 중심으로 예방해야 하는지, 어떤 청소년을 집중적으로 보호해야 하는지 알 수 없다,
So stated, emphasizing that the Ministry of Health and Welfare must collaborate with relevant agencies to comprehensively analyze the causes and risk characteristics of youth pharmaceutical poisoning and establish a national management system linking prevention and management measures.
