Articles: emergency-services.
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A case-control study was carried out in Nottingham Health District, to establish whether children under five years of age admitted to hospital after a accidental injury were more likely to have previously attended the accident and emergency (A & E) department than community controls. The subjects were 342 case-control pairs matched on sex and date of birth, consisting of children under five years resident in the Health District, and the main exposure measures were attendance at the A & E department before the case's first admission, type of injury and number of earlier attendances. ⋯ It is concluded that accidental injuries in pre-school children that require attendance at the A & E department predict accidental injuries requiring admission. Making attendances at A & E departments notifiable to health visitors would facilitate the undertaking of accident prevention work.
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Pediatric emergency care · Jun 1993
General trauma in a pediatric emergency department: spectrum and consultation patterns.
To assess the consultation patterns of pediatric emergency physicians in the management of injured children and to describe the spectrum of pediatric trauma, we retrospectively reviewed 601 patients treated in the emergency department for injuries during four one-week periods at a designated level I regional pediatric trauma center (50,000 patients/year) with a pediatric emergency medicine fellowship. The majority (94%) of pediatric trauma was minor; only 2% of children had injuries severe enough to require direct transfer to the operating room. The highest volume of patients, the greatest number of consultations, and the majority of admissions to the operating room occurred between 4 PM and midnight. ⋯ One half of all procedures involved laceration repair, and one third involved splinting or casting. Four hundred ten patients (68%) were managed by physicians in the emergency department without consultation. The orthopedic service performed one half of all consultations and admitted the largest number of patients; the majority of patients taken directly to the operating room had musculoskeletal injuries.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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Journal of medical ethics · Jun 1993
Postmortem procedures in the emergency department: using the recently dead to practise and teach.
In generations past, it was common practice for doctors to learn lifesaving technical skills on patients who had recently died. But this practice has lately been criticised on religious, legal, and ethical grounds, and has fallen into disuse in many hospitals and emergency departments. This paper uses four questions to resolve whether doctors in emergency departments should practise and teach non-invasive and minimally invasive procedures on the newly dead: Is it ethically and legally permissible to practise and teach non-invasive and minimally invasive procedures on the newly dead emergency-department patient? What are the alternatives or possible consequences of not practising non-invasive and minimally invasive procedures on newly dead patients? Is consent from relatives required? Should doctors in emergency departments allow or even encourage this use of newly dead patients?
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Revista médica de Chile · Jun 1993
Comparative Study[Prevalence of mental disorders at emergency service].
Aiming to know the frequency of mental disorders among patients consulting a general hospital emergency ward, 2834 medical records of such patients were retrospectively reviewed. 8.4% of consultations were due to mental disorders. Sixty four percent of patients consulting for mental disorders were women. ⋯ A low percent of these patients were referred to psychiatry. The low frequency of psychiatric referrals and the importance of psychiatric advice in emergency rooms is discussed.