Abstract

EPIDEMIOLOGICAL CHARACTERSTICS OF PATIENTS ADMITING TO EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT OF TERTIARY CARE TEACHING HOSPITAL

Jeet Bahadur Moktan, Niraj Shrestha, Laxman Wagle*, Treesa Augustine, Meena Lama

ABSTRACT

Introduction: There are very limited data on epidemiology of patients admitted to emergency department of tertiary care centres in India. Aim of this study is to study the epidemiology of patient visiting to emergency unit at rural tertiary care teaching hospital. Materials and Methods: Prospective, observational study for period of 6 months were studied in emergency unit at rural tertiary care teaching hospital in south India after human ethical research committee approval. All the patients visiting at emergency unit were included. Epidemiological data like gender, age, socioeconomic profile, diagnosis, length of stay and outcome of visit were recorded in suitably designed data collection form. Data were measured using descriptive statistics. Microsoft excel were used for summarisation and presentation of data. Results: 600 patients were enrolled where male (68.66%) were more than females (31.33%). Majority (35.83%) of the patients were within age group of 21-40 years. 50.33% of patients were not employed and 17.66% were having monthly income less than Rs.5000. Among total of 41 diagnosis; only 14 diagnosis were related to 80.5% of emergency visit being road traffic accident mostly common (17.66%). 3.83% of patients stayed for >24 hours and 83.66% for only 1-6 hours. 7 out of 600 died and others were visited to general medicine department (39.6%) followed by intensive care unit (31%) and to others. Very less (5.33%) were referred to higher centre for further management. Conclusion: This study illustrates the epidemiology of patients admitted to emergency department. Public health interventions are needed to highly prevalent cases.

Keywords: gender, age, socioeconomic profile, diagnosis, length.