Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
-
Observational Study
Causes of shortness of breath in the acute patient: A national study.
Dyspnea is a common and ambiguous complaint that results in 3.4 million emergency department (ED) visits annually. While learners may encounter lists of differential diagnoses to consider while in training, often these lists are not empirically based. We sought to establish an evidence-based differential diagnosis for dyspnea and to determine whether normal vital signs can rule out a life-threatening diagnosis. ⋯ For patients with dyspnea, the high utilization of ICUs highlights the importance of an accurate differential. The frequencies established here can be used as pretest probabilities in Bayesian analysis to improve the accuracy of differential diagnosis lists.