• Am. J. Surg. · May 2012

    Multicenter Study Comparative Study

    Acute care surgery: the impact of an acute care surgery service on assessment, flow, and disposition in the emergency department.

    • Chad G Ball, Anthony R MacLean, Elijah Dixon, May Lynn Quan, Lynn Nicholson, Andrew W Kirkpatrick, and Francis R Sutherland.
    • Department of Surgery, Foothills Medical Centre, 1403 29 Street NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. ball.chad@gmail.com
    • Am. J. Surg. 2012 May 1; 203 (5): 578-83.

    BackgroundAcute care surgery (ACS) services are becoming increasingly popular.MethodsAssessment, flow, and disposition of adult ACS patients (acute, nontrauma surgical conditions) through the emergency department (ED) in a large health care system (Calgary) were prospectively analyzed.ResultsAmong 447 ACS ED consultations over 3 centers (70% admitted to ACS), the median wait time from the consultation request to ACS arrival was 36 minutes, and from ACS arrival to the admission request it was 91 minutes. The total ACS-dependent time was 127 minutes compared with 261 minutes for initial ED activities and 104 minutes for transfer to a hospital ward (P < .05). Forty percent of patients underwent computed tomography (CT) imaging (76% before consultation). The time to ACS consultation was 305 minutes when a CT scan was performed first.ConclusionsAn ACS service results in rapid ED assessment of surgical emergencies. Patient waiting is dominated by the time before requesting ACS consultation and/or waiting for transfer to the ward.Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…

What will the 'Medical Journal of You' look like?

Start your free 21 day trial now.

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.