[A mortality study in the Internal Medicine Emergency Service of October 12 Hospital during 1989]

152,902 patients were attended at the Emergency Department of "12 de Octubre" Hospital during 1989; 48,701 of them were seen in the Internal Medicine area. 196 dead, 164 case histories were selected in order to fulfil the protocol. Several variants were analysed, such as age, sex, diagnosis, time spent at the hospital, quality of life, date, etc. 53.6% were male; the median age was 73 years and the overall median age of all patients seen was 55.9 years. Median Karnovsky was 52.50% of the patients died during their first 5 hours at the Emergency Department. The most frequent diagnoses for the area were neurological, followed by cardiovascular, oncological, digestive, etc. The most frequent diseases observed were cerebrovascular accident, cardiac insufficiency and acute infarction, oncological cases and death on arrival. Mortality was higher in winter. On the whole, mortality was higher in oncology patients followed way behind by neurology digestive and cardiovascular patients.