Abstract
Background
Injury is an escalating public health problem, representing about 9% of global mortality, which disproportionately impacts lower- and middle-income countries. There are approximately 12,000 annual fatalities from road traffic injuries in Egypt, but a little information about delays in seeking emergent care is available.
Objectives
To measure the time interval between sustaining an injury and presentation to the emergency department of Ain Shams University Surgery Hospital and to identify possible causes of these delays.
Methods
We conducted a cross-sectional, facilitated survey of a convenience sample of trauma patients presenting to the emergency department of Ain Shams University Surgery Hospital from 1 February to 31 May 2014. Data obtained included: demographic information, trauma incident details, and injury assessment.
Results
The average reported transport time for patients from injury to hospital arrival was 3.8 h, while the mean ambulance response time was 45 min. Referral from other hospitals was revealed to be a significant cause of delay (P = 0.004), while ignorance of the local ambulance phone number could not be confirmed as a cause (P = 0.2).
Conclusion
This study demonstrated that trauma patients at our hospital experience more than 3 h of delay until they reach the ED. It also identified the possible causes accounting for that delay. However, additional nationwide research is needed to establish the clear causation or association of these causes with the delay intervals.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Dr.Hani Mowafi, Department of Emergency Medicine, Yale University School of Medicine and Dr.Waleed Hammad, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine for providing us their valuable feedback on the study protocol. The authors also would like to thank Dr. Ahmed Mohsen Hassan, Faculty of Medicine Ain Shams University for his cooperation in data collection.
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Haitham M. Saleh, Abdelrahman E.Elsabagh, Mohammad Gamal Elewa, Ahmed AlaaEldin Fawzy, Omar Mahmoud Hassan, Angela C.Comer, Ibrahim M. Abdelmonem, Jon Mark Hirshon, and Mohamed El-Shinawi declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Drs. Hirshon and El Shinawi would like to acknowledge funding support for their efforts from the National Institute of Health Fogarty International Center Grant 5D43TW007296. The authors also would like to thank Ainshams Medical Students Research Association (AMSRA) for supporting this study.
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All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008 (5).
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Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.
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Saleh, H.M., Elsabagh, A.E., Elewa, M.G. et al. Admission delays’ magnitude of traumatized patients in the emergency department of a hospital in Egypt: a cross-sectional study. Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg 44, 225–230 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00068-017-0762-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00068-017-0762-1