BACKGROUND Emergency major gastrointestinal (GI) surgery carries a considerable risk of mortality and postoperative complications. Effective management of complications and appropriate organization of postoperative care may improve outcome. The importance of the latter is poorly described in emergency GI surgical patients. We aimed to present mortality data and evaluate the postoperative care p...

BACKGROUND Although acute hospitals offer a twenty-four hour seven day a week service levels of staffing are lower over the weekends and some health care processes may be less readily available over the weekend. Whilst it is thought that emergency admission to hospital on the weekend is associated with an increased risk of death, the extent to which this applies to elective admissions is less w...

OBJECTIVES Weekend admissions have been shown to be associated with an increased risk of mortality compared with weekday admissions for many diagnoses. We analysed emergency department admissions within the Scottish National Health Service to investigate whether mortality is increased in case of weekend emergency department admissions. DESIGN A cohort study. SETTING Scotland National Health...

The triage system in the emergency department classifies patients according to priority levels of care. Neonates are a vulnerable population and require rapid assessment. OBJECTIVE To correlate the priority levels in newborns seen in the paediatric emergency department with admissions, resource consumption, and service times. PATIENTS AND METHOD Observational study, using the Andorran triag...

OBJECTIVES Health utility combines health related quality of life and mortality to produce a generic outcome measure reflecting both morbidity and mortality. It has not been widely used as an outcome measure in evaluations of emergency care and little is known about the feasibility of measurement, typical values obtained or baseline factors that predict health utility. We aimed to measure healt...

INTRODUCTION Available data suggest that Parkinson's disease (PD) patients have a significant socioeconomic impact owing partly to increased hospital and drug utilization. The aims of this study were to provide a profile of patients with PD who required admission to hospital and to determine the reasons for emergency admission. PATIENTS AND METHODS Between September 1st, 2004 and August 31st,...

Introduction Upper gastrointestinal bleeding (UGIB) is a frequent cause of emergency department admission. It can be caused by a wide spectrum of pathologies, some of which carry clinically significant morbidity and mortality. To stratify the risk and plan the level of care at admission at Emergency Department is challenging. Several risk factors for adverse outcomes are known and different ris...

Introduction The use of emergent status is believed to provide an easily auditable approach towards capturing patient acuity. Current case-mix methodologies in Ontario for the acute inpatient population make very limited use of the emergent status of patients (whether the patient was admitted from the emergency room). These patients tend to be longer stay, and current resource utilization indic...