Background and Objective: Poisoning is one of the significant causes of mortality and hospitalization in children. This problem occurs mostly under the age of two and is due to accidental ingestion of drug and poisons.Because of the importance of poisoning and its change in cities and time periods, this study was done to evaluate the epidemiology of poisoning in children admitted to Taleghani Medical-Educational centre of Gorgan, 2009 .

  Materials and Methods : This cross-sectional study was conducted on 164 hospitalized children due to poisoning. Patient's data such as age, sex and diagnosis were recorded in preplanned questionnaire, then data analyzed by spss 16.

  Results: In this survey, 6053 children were admitted in emergency ward of Gorgan's Taleghani hospital ­during 2009. Of these cases, 164 are related to poisoning including opium intoxication(39.63%),drugs(24.39%),kerosene(9.75%),house hold chemicals(4.87%) methadone intoxication (4.26%), and mouse killer(2.43%).

  Conclusion: Toxification should be taken into account seriously in children. Because of high frequency of opium and medicinal poisoning, we recommend public education to prevent from this accident and to improve public health.

  Background and­ Objective: ­­ Pain is a multidimensional phenomenon defined as­“an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience that is ­ associated with actual or potential tissue ­damage”­.­Infants and children are vaccinated before two years on several occasions. Many of these vaccines are injectable, and are painful. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether topical tetracaine can reduce the pain of IM DPT injection compared to placebo in infants of two months of age.

  Material and Methods: ­ In this study, 40 infants aged two months were selected by convenience sampling and randomly placed in two groups of case and control. The Infants of experimental group were injected by using topical tetracaine gel %4­­ and those of the other group by a placebo. The intensity of injection was scored by a pediatric registered nurse, using the FLACC pain scale.

  Results: Although the mean of pain intensity in case group (8.3) is lower than that of controls (9.1) and also the time of pain relief, the use of tetracaine could not be significantly effective in reducing the severity of pain due to intramuscular injection of DPT vaccine. Conclusion:­ ­ Based on the results, there is no significant difference between case and control groups on using tetracaine, but because of low pain intensity in case group, further researches are needed to be done.

  Key words: Pain, Infants, ­Tetracain gel, Intramuscular injection

Background and Objective: Given the correlation of birth weight with growth indices, this study aimed at determing the growth indices of low birth weight (LBW) and normal birth weight of 2-5 year old children in rural areas of Gonbad, Iran.

Material and Methods: In this retrospective cohort study, using multi-stage cluster sampling, 200 LBW 2-5-year-old children and 200 normal birth weight were selected. The data was collected through interview and analyzed by Pearson correlation, t-test and chi-square.

Results: The prevalence of shorter stature and low weight-for-age in case group was higher than those of controls, and the high weight-for-age was higher in control group. Gestational age, maternal Body Mass Index (BMI), intepregnancy interval and age of delivery were determined as the most important factors related to LBW.

Conclusion: The results imply that LBW affects adversely on growth indices in 2-5 year old children. Considering gestational age, maternal BMI, interpregnancy interval and age of delivery, we recommend recognizing the mothers who are at risk for delivery of LBW to educate and take care of them.