Evaluation of the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of adolescents admitted to pediatric emergency department

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of adolescentpatients, aged between 11 and 17 years, admitted to Dokuz Eylül University HospitalPediatric Emergency Department during a year, to assess the state of emergency and theeffecting factors on the state of emergency.METHODS: Adolescent patients, aged between 11 and 17 years, admitted to Dokuz EylülUniversity Hospital Pediatric Emergency Department during 2005 were enrolled in the study.A descriptive and cross-sectional study was performed by using a data recording formincluding information of sociodemographic characteristics, presenting complaints, the state ofemergency, diagnosis, clinical course, and treatment.RESULTS: Out of the 5645 patients admitted to the pediatric emergency department duringthe study period, 958 (16.9 %) were in adolescent age group. The 54.1 % of patients weremale and 56.6 % were adolescents aged between 11 and 14 years. The 49.6 % of the patientsadmitted with non-urgent reasons, while 3.3 % with urgent and 47.1 % with emergentreasons. The rate of non-urgent patients were significantly higher than the urgent patients inthe school-attending, with a health insurance Emekli Sandığı, out of work time and weekendadmission groups. In urgent or emergent patients, the most common reason for admissionwere injuries (46.0 %); infections (63.3 %) in the non-urgent patients.The 30.5 % of the patients admitted with injury. The most frequent injury mechanismwas fall. Among all admissions, 4.2 % were due to psychiatric causes. The most frequentcause of psychiatric admission was suicide attempt, and 85.0 % of these patiens were femaleand all ingested drug overdose. The 5.2 % of the admitted patients were hospitalized. Themost frequent hospitalizing diagnosis was acute abdomen (46.0 %). The 5.9 % of the admittedpatients were forensic case.CONCLUSION: In our study, the majority of adolescent emergencies were injuries andabdominal emergencies. Near half of the adolescents presented with non-urgent reasons. Themajority of non-urgent admissions could easily be managed by primary health care providers.These data may guide in re-constructing our country?s health care system.KEY WORDS: Adolescent, emergency department, the state of emergency,sociodemographic characteristics