Comparison of Presumptive Diagnoses in the Emergency Department and the Final Diagnoses in the Wards

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The emergency departments (EDs) are considered as the front line of the hospitals. Patients with various chief complaints come to ED and get treatment; some are cured and discharged where some need hospitalization. Our aim was to compare the impressions of emergency medicine (EM) physicians with the last diagnosis of the wards.
METHODS: This is a prospective, cross-sectional study. All patients brought into the ED of Imam Reza Hospital, Tabriz, from March 20th to June 21st, 2008 who needed to be admitted in internal medicine, neurology, neurosurgery, surgery and infectious diseases wards were included. The first impressions following the first examination in the ED and the Presumptive Diagnoses (PD) which led to admission and the final diagnosis which was made in the wards were compared. The results were analyzed using SPSS 15.0.
RESULTS: Of the total 93.5% of the PD, which were made by the EM physicians were the same with final diagnosis made by the ward’s physicians. PD in the ED and final diagnoses in the internal, neurology, neurosurgery, surgery, infectious diseases were the same in 93.3%, 97.1%, 100%, 88.6%, 87.5% of the cases respectively.
CONCLUSION: Sometimes the wards physicians have doubt on the diagnoses made by the EM physicians. In this study, we found that, although there is a lot of limitation in presence of diagnostic tools and time pressure at the EDs, the EM physicians can diagnose most of diseases properly.