AbstractBackground: Acute poisoning has reached the epidemic form which is the main means of deliberate self harm. The gastric lavage at an earliest poison of time is an important additional procedure of decontamination. This study was undertaken mainly to study the effectiveness of early and late gastric lavage in emergency department. Materials and Methods: A prospective study was undertaken among the 90 cases admitted to emergency department over a period of three years. The gastric lavage was performed on all the patients and morbidity and mortality of all the patients was studied with respect to
duration of ventilation, duration of stay in ICU and mortality. Results: Age group of 31–40 years in early gastric lavage and 41–50 years in late group were higher. Males outnumbered females. Almost 69.8% of the patients with early lavage group and 70.2% in the late lavage group had acute poisoning with organophosphorus poison. The mean duration of ventilation in the early lavage group was 1.46 days and late lavage group was 4.53 days which was statistically significant. Mean duration of ICU stay in early lavage group was 6.4 days and in late lavage group was 7.6 days. About 9.3% of the patients in early lavage group and 17% of the late lavage group were died during the course of treatment in the hospital. Conclusion: This study had shown the early gastric lavage may help in reducing the morbidity of the patients with acute poisoning but not mortality of the patient.