Characteristics of chest pain and its acute management in a low-middle income country: analysis of emergency department surveillance data from Pakistan

BMC Emergency Medicine

Research

Muhammad Mujeeb Khan¹  Rakshinda Mujeeb²  Badar Afzal²  Junaid A Razzak³  Nukhba Zia⁴  Nino Paichadze⁴ 

[1] Benazir Bhutto Hospital, Rawalpindi, Pakistan;Department of Emergency Medicine, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan;Department of Emergency Medicine, John Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA;The author was affiliated with the Department of Emergency Medicine, Aga Khan University, at the time when study was conducted, Karachi, Pakistan;Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit, Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, USA;

关键词: Emergency departments;    chest pain;    resources;    Pakistan;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-227X-15-S2-S13

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundChest pain is one of the most frequent causes of emergency department (ED) visits in high-income countries. Little is known about chest pain patients presenting to EDs of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The objective of this study was to describe the characteristics of chest pain patients presenting to emergency departments (EDs) of Pakistan and to determine the utilization of ED resources in the management of chest pain patients and their outcomes.MethodsThis study used pilot active surveillance data from seven major EDs in Pakistan. Data were collected on all patients presenting to the EDs of the participating sites to seek emergency care for chest pain.ResultsA total of 20,435 patients were admitted to the EDs with chest pain. The majority were males (M 60%, F 40%) and the mean age was 42 years (SD+/- 14). The great majority (97%, n = 19,164) of patients were admitted to the EDs of public hospitals compared to private hospitals and only 3% arrived by ambulance. Electrocardiograms (ECGs) were used in more than half of all chest pain patients (55%, n = 10,890) while cardiac enzymes were performed in less than 5% of cases. Chest X-rays were the most frequently performed radiological procedure (21%, n = 4,135); more than half of the admitted chest pain patients were discharged from the EDs and less than 1% died in the ED.ConclusionChest pain is a common presenting complaint in EDs in Pakistan. The majority received an ECG and the use of diagnostic testing, such as cardiac enzymes, is quite uncommon.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Paichad et al. 2015. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.