ArticleScandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine2020
Non-specific diagnoses are frequent in patients hospitalized after calling 112 and their mortality is high - a register-based Danish cohort study.
Article in Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Risk assessment reasoning and decision-making by ambulance professionals in patients with a transient loss of consciousness: a qualitative study.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2026Article
- Characteristics and causes in patients presenting with convulsions in the Danish prehospital setting.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2025Article
- Characteristics and mortality of patients categorised with non-specific symptoms when dialling the emergency medical number: a register-based cohort study.BMC emergency medicine · 2025Article
- Utilization of acute medical services in general practice: a retrospective routine data analysis.International journal of emergency medicine · 2025Article
- Exploring care pathways of patients conveyed by emergency medical services (EMS) through electronic health records.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2025Article
- Critical interventions, diagnosis, and mortality in children treated by a physician-manned mobile emergency care unit.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2025Article
- Existing Data Sources in Clinical Epidemiology: The Danish Prehospital Medical Record System.Clinical epidemiology · 2025Review
- Acute patients discharged without an established diagnosis: risk of mortality and readmission of nonspecific diagnoses compared to disease-specific diagnoses.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2024Article
- Risk stratification tools for patients with syncope in emergency medical services and emergency departments: a scoping review.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2023Article
- Prehospital Release of Patients After Treatment in an Anesthesiologist-Staffed Mobile Emergency Care Unit.JAMA network open · 2022Article
- Using machine learning to predict subsequent events after EMS non-conveyance decisions.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2022Article
- EMS non-conveyance: A safe practice to decrease ED crowding or a threat to patient safety?BMC emergency medicine · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe number of patients calling for an ambulance increases. A considerable number of patients receive a non-specific diagnosis at discharge from the hospital, and this could imply less serious acute conditions, but the mortality has only scarcely been studied. The aim of this study was to examine the most frequent sub-diagnoses among patients with hospital non-specific diagnoses after calling 112 and their subsequent mortality.
methodsA historical cohort study of patients brought to the hospital by ambulance after calling 112 in 2007-2014 and diagnosed with a non-specific diagnosis, chapter R or Z, in the International Classification of Diseases, 10th edition (ICD-10). 1-day and 30-day mortality was analyzed by survival analyses and compared by the log-rank test.
resultsWe included 74,847 ambulance runs in 53,937 unique individuals. The most frequent diagnoses were 'unspecified disease' (Z039), constituting 47.0% (n 35,279). In children 0-9 years old, 'febrile convulsions' was the most frequent non-specific diagnosis used in 54.3% (n 1602). Overall, 1- and 30-day mortality was 2.2% (n 1205) and 6.0% (n 3258). The highest mortality was in the diagnostic group 'suspected cardiovascular disease' (Z035) and 'unspecified disease' (Z039) with 1-day mortality 2.6% (n 43) and 2.4% (n 589), and 30 day mortality of 6.32% (n 104) and 8.1% (n 1975).
conclusionAmong patients calling an ambulance and discharged with non-specific diagnoses the 1- and 30-day mortality, despite modest mortality percentages lead to a high number of deaths.
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