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Characteristics of frequently attending children in hospital emergency departments: a systematic review

OBJECTIVE: To summarise the literature on frequent attendances to hospital emergency departments (EDs) and describe sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of children who attend EDs frequently. SETTING: Hospital EDs. PARTICIPANTS: Children <21 years, attending hospital EDs frequently. PRIM...

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Autores principales: Greenfield, Geva, Okoli, Olivia, Quezada-Yamamoto, Harumi, Blair, Mitch, Saxena, Sonia, Majeed, Azeem, Hayhoe, Benedict
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8523960/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34663662
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-051409
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author Greenfield, Geva
Okoli, Olivia
Quezada-Yamamoto, Harumi
Blair, Mitch
Saxena, Sonia
Majeed, Azeem
Hayhoe, Benedict
author_facet Greenfield, Geva
Okoli, Olivia
Quezada-Yamamoto, Harumi
Blair, Mitch
Saxena, Sonia
Majeed, Azeem
Hayhoe, Benedict
author_sort Greenfield, Geva
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: To summarise the literature on frequent attendances to hospital emergency departments (EDs) and describe sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of children who attend EDs frequently. SETTING: Hospital EDs. PARTICIPANTS: Children <21 years, attending hospital EDs frequently. PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Outcomes measures were defined separately in each study, and were predominantly the number of ED attendances per year. RESULTS: We included 21 studies representing 6 513 627 children. Between 0.3% and 75% of all paediatric ED users were frequent users. Most studies defined four or more visits per year as a ‘frequent ED’ usage. Children who were frequent ED users were more likely to be less than 5 years old. In the USA, patients with public insurance were more likely to be frequent attenders. Frequent ED users more likely to be frequent users of primary care and have long-term conditions; the most common diagnoses were infections and gastroenteritis. CONCLUSIONS: The review included a wide range of information across various health systems, however, children who were frequent ED users have some universal characteristics in common. Policies to reduce frequent attendance might usefully focus on preschool children and supporting primary care in responding to primary care oriented conditions.
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spelling pubmed-85239602021-10-19 Characteristics of frequently attending children in hospital emergency departments: a systematic review Greenfield, Geva Okoli, Olivia Quezada-Yamamoto, Harumi Blair, Mitch Saxena, Sonia Majeed, Azeem Hayhoe, Benedict BMJ Open Emergency Medicine OBJECTIVE: To summarise the literature on frequent attendances to hospital emergency departments (EDs) and describe sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of children who attend EDs frequently. SETTING: Hospital EDs. PARTICIPANTS: Children <21 years, attending hospital EDs frequently. PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Outcomes measures were defined separately in each study, and were predominantly the number of ED attendances per year. RESULTS: We included 21 studies representing 6 513 627 children. Between 0.3% and 75% of all paediatric ED users were frequent users. Most studies defined four or more visits per year as a ‘frequent ED’ usage. Children who were frequent ED users were more likely to be less than 5 years old. In the USA, patients with public insurance were more likely to be frequent attenders. Frequent ED users more likely to be frequent users of primary care and have long-term conditions; the most common diagnoses were infections and gastroenteritis. CONCLUSIONS: The review included a wide range of information across various health systems, however, children who were frequent ED users have some universal characteristics in common. Policies to reduce frequent attendance might usefully focus on preschool children and supporting primary care in responding to primary care oriented conditions. BMJ Publishing Group 2021-10-18 /pmc/articles/PMC8523960/ /pubmed/34663662 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-051409 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2021. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Emergency Medicine
Greenfield, Geva
Okoli, Olivia
Quezada-Yamamoto, Harumi
Blair, Mitch
Saxena, Sonia
Majeed, Azeem
Hayhoe, Benedict
Characteristics of frequently attending children in hospital emergency departments: a systematic review
title Characteristics of frequently attending children in hospital emergency departments: a systematic review
title_full Characteristics of frequently attending children in hospital emergency departments: a systematic review
title_fullStr Characteristics of frequently attending children in hospital emergency departments: a systematic review
title_full_unstemmed Characteristics of frequently attending children in hospital emergency departments: a systematic review
title_short Characteristics of frequently attending children in hospital emergency departments: a systematic review
title_sort characteristics of frequently attending children in hospital emergency departments: a systematic review
topic Emergency Medicine
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8523960/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34663662
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-051409
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