Scientific Reports (Jan 2021)

A special acute care surgery model for dealing with dilemmas involved in emergency department in China

  • Dequan Xu,
  • Yue Yin,
  • Limin Hou,
  • Haoxin Zhou

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-81347-9
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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Abstract There was a fast growth in the number and the formation of emergency department (ED) visits in China during the twenty-first century. As a result, engaging special medical model will be essential to decompressing the ED visits. To do this, it will be important to understand which specific aspects to focus interventions on for the greatest impact. To characterize the emergency surgery patients who were seen and discharged from ED. Retrospective cohort study of hospitalized emergency surgery patients currently under the care from specialists presenting to an urban, university affiliated hospital between 01 January 2018 and 1 January 2019. This study will highlight some of the controversies and challenges and key lessons learned. During the study period there were 231,229 ED visits; 4100 of these patients were admitted for Acute care surgery (ACS) service. Multivariate analysis identified age ≧ 65 (p = 0.023; odds ratio, OR = 2.66), ACS model (p = 0.000, OR = 0.18), ICU stay (p = 0.000, OR = 118.73) as factors associated with in-hospital mortality. There was a increase in length of stay between young and elderly postoperative patients when stratifying patients by age (11.67 ± 9.48 vs 13.95 ± 9.11 p < 0.05). ED overcrowding is not just an ED problem. ED overcrowding is a systems problem requiring a systematic facility-wide multidisciplinary response. Continuous and high-quality surveillance data across China are needed to estimate the acute care surgery model which used to deal with ED overcrowding.