[An epidemiological study of pediatric emergencies in a general hospital. The factors involved in inappropriate demand]. / Estudio epidemiológico de las urgencias pediátricas en un hospital general. Factores implicados en una demanda inadecuada.

UNLABELLED: We have carried out a retrospective study of a representative sample of the infant population attended at our pediatric hospital emergency service (PES) during 1992 in order to determine the frequency of unnecessary consultations and the implicated factors. PATIENTS AND METHODS: During this time period, 6,543 pediatric emergencies (except traumatisms) were attended, of which 1,298 cases were selected. We analyzed the epidemiological patient profile, motive for consultation, final diagnosis, type of emergency and factors involved in unnecessary consultations. RESULTS: We found that the most commonly attended groups of diagnosis were respiratory diseases (37%), ill-defined signs and symptoms (22%) and infectious diseases (13%). Sixty-nine percent of the patients were catalogued as unnecessary emergency consultations and a statistical relationship was found with factors such as: age less than 7 years (76%), arrival by initiative of the patients themselves (76%), onset of symptoms between 1-4 days (77%) and the time of day between 2.200 and 07.00 hours (75%). CONCLUSIONS: We conclude unnecessary consultations occur at a high frequency. We comment on the importance of the age of the patient, who takes the initiative to come to the PES, the duration of the symptoms and the hour of consultation as predictive variables to suggest poor use of these pediatric services.