[An epidemiological study of pediatric emergencies in a general hospital. The factors involved in inappropriate demand]
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S Lapeña López de Armentia1, S Reguero Celada, M García Rabanal
1Servicio de Pediatría, Complejo Hospitalario del INSALUD, León.
Insights
Unnecessary pediatric emergency consultations are frequent, particularly for young children with recent symptoms. Understanding these factors can help optimize pediatric service use.
Area of Science:
- Pediatrics
- Emergency Medicine
- Public Health
Background:
- Pediatric emergency services (PES) face challenges with high consultation volumes.
- Identifying factors contributing to unnecessary visits is crucial for resource allocation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine the frequency of unnecessary consultations at a pediatric hospital emergency service.
- To identify factors associated with unnecessary pediatric emergency visits.
Main Methods:
- Retrospective study of 1,298 pediatric emergencies (excluding traumatisms) from 1992.
- Analysis of patient demographics, consultation reasons, diagnoses, and contributing factors.
Main Results:
- Respiratory diseases, ill-defined symptoms, and infections were common diagnoses.
- 69% of consultations were deemed unnecessary.
- Factors linked to unnecessary visits included age (<7 years), patient-initiated arrival, symptom onset (1-4 days), and late-night/early-morning hours.
Conclusions:
- Unnecessary pediatric emergency consultations are prevalent.
- Age, self-initiated visits, symptom duration, and consultation time are predictive of overuse.
- These findings highlight areas for improving pediatric healthcare access and resource management.
Unlabelled:
We have carried out a retrospective study of a representative sample of the infant population attended at our pediatric hospital emergency service (PES) during 1992 in order to determine the frequency of unnecessary consultations and the implicated factors.
Patients And Methods:
During this time period, 6,543 pediatric emergencies (except traumatisms) were attended, of which 1,298 cases were selected. We analyzed the epidemiological patient profile, motive for consultation, final diagnosis, type of emergency and factors involved in unnecessary consultations.
Results:
We found that the most commonly attended groups of diagnosis were respiratory diseases (37%), ill-defined signs and symptoms (22%) and infectious diseases (13%). Sixty-nine percent of the patients were catalogued as unnecessary emergency consultations and a statistical relationship was found with factors such as: age less than 7 years (76%), arrival by initiative of the patients themselves (76%), onset of symptoms between 1-4 days (77%) and the time of day between 2.200 and 07.00 hours (75%).
Conclusions:
We conclude unnecessary consultations occur at a high frequency. We comment on the importance of the age of the patient, who takes the initiative to come to the PES, the duration of the symptoms and the hour of consultation as predictive variables to suggest poor use of these pediatric services.