Keywords
epidemiology
tertiary care hospital
How to Cite
Abstract
Introduction: The emergency department is concerned with providing immediate medical care to patients
according to the triage system.
Objectives: To explore the clinical and epidemiological features and to measure the burden of different
diseases presented in the emergency departments of tertiary care hospitals of Rawalpindi.
Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional descriptive study, data was collected from 357 patients from 3
main hospitals of Rawalpindi, namely Holy family hospital (HFH), Benazir Bhutto Hospital (BBH), and
District Headquarters Hospital (DHQ) through consecutive non-random sampling. Data was collected by
using self-structured questionnaire and analyzed through SPSS version 28. Apart from descriptive statistics
chi-square test was also applied. P<0.05 was taken as significant.
Results: The most frequent time of presentation in ER was in the afternoon with 119 (33.33%) out of 357 and
others are in the morning with 99(27.3%) and evening with 57(15.97%). Almost 256 (71.71%) patients in
Emergency were non-ambulatory while 101(28.29%) were ambulatory. Most (57.7%) were males. Cases
belonging to medical care were 205(57.42%) and to trauma were 105 (29.4%). The cases related to pediatric,
gynecology, and cardiovascular diseases were 10.08%, 0.6% and 2.52% respectively. There was a strong
association between age groups and specialty-specific patients’ presentation (P <0.001); trauma-related cases
(P=0.002); cases with medicine-related complaints (P<0.001). There was a significant association between
income and specialty-specific patients’ presentation (P= 0.05); in cases with medicine-related complaints (P=
0.02)
Conclusion: Association of age, gender and social class with trauma-related cases and treatment of
medicine-related complaints was statistically significant.