Effect of age adjustment on two triage methods.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Most emergency departments rely on acuity assessment, triage, to recognize critically ill patients that need urgent treatment, and to allocate resources according to need. The accuracy of commonly used triage instruments such as the Emergency Severity Index (ESI) is lower for older adults compared to young patients. We aim to examine, whether adjusting the triage category by age leads to improvement in sensitivity without excessive increase in patient numbers in the higher triage categories. The primary outcome measure was 3-day mortality and secondary outcomes were 30-day mortality, hospital admission, and HDU/ICU admissions.

Methods

We gathered data of all adult patients who had an unscheduled visit to any of our three emergency departments within one month. The

SUBMITTER: Kemp K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8961917 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature