ArticleThe American journal of emergency medicine2021
Impact of temporary closures of emergency departments during the COVID-19 outbreak on clinical outcomes for emergency patients in a metropolitan area.
Article in The American journal of emergency medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Emergency Department Closures and Patient Outcomes: Scoping Review of Impacts on Care, Equity, and System Performance.The western journal of emergency medicine · 2026Article
- Impact of the Early COVID-19 Pandemic on Emergency Department Visits of Adult Cancer Patients With Fever or Respiratory Symptoms: A Korean Nationwide Population-Based Study, 2016-2020.Journal of Korean medical science · 2024Article
- Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on interhospital transfer of patients with major trauma in Korea: a retrospective cohort study.BMC emergency medicine · 2024Article
- The trend of mortality rates following hospitals downgrading and closures due to outbreak of COVID-19 in Fars province: A comparative cohort study.Health science reports · 2024Article
- Article
- Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Admission and Mortality Among Patients With Severe Emergency Diseases at Emergency Departments in Korea in 2020: Registry Data From the National Emergency Department Information System.Journal of Korean medical science · 2023Article
- Collateral Effect of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic on Emergency Department Visits in Korea.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2022Article
- The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Outpatient Visits for All-Cause and Chronic Diseases in Korea: A Nationwide Population-Based Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- The impact of COVID-19 on the patterns of emergency department visits among pediatric patients.The American journal of emergency medicine · 2022Article
- Impact of COVID-19 on emergency patients in the resuscitation room: A cross-sectional study.Journal of clinical laboratory analysis · 2022Article
- Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Emergency Care Utilization and Outcomes in Pediatric Patients with Intussusception.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Comparative Evaluation of the Prognosis of Septic Shock Patients from Before to After the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Single-Center Clinical Analysis.Journal of personalized medicine · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundDuring the early phase of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, many emergency departments (EDs) were exposed to COVID-19 and were temporarily closed according to national protocol of Korea. We aimed to evaluate the effect of concurrent and recurrent temporary closures of EDs on the clinical outcomes of patients who visited EDs during the COVID-19 outbreak.
methodsThis cross-sectional study used a nationwide emergency patient database. Patients who visited one of the 46 EDs in Daegu and Gyeongbuk between January 21 and April 14, 2020 were included. The main exposure variable was the first medical contact (ED visit or 119 call to emergency medical services (EMS)) during closure of at least one ED. There were 25 temporary closures of six Level-1 and Level-2 EDs between February 18 and March 17, 2020. We constructed a dataset by performing bidirectional crossover matching and conducted a conditional logistic regression analysis where the primary outcome was in-hospital mortality.
resultsOf the 94,360 eligible study participants, 36,327 were classified into the non-EMS-use group and 10,116 were classified into the EMS-use group. In-hospital mortality rates were 2.0% and 1.6% for the temporary-closure and no-closure groups in the non-EMS-use group (p-value, 0.03) and 8.7% and 7.4% in the EMS-use group (p-value, 0.02), respectively. In the conditional logistic analysis for in-hospital mortality, the odds ratios (95% confidence intervals) of the temporary-closure group compared the no-closure group were 1.22 (1.03-1.44) among the non-EMS-use group and 1.23 (1.04-1.46) among the EMS-use group.
conclusionThe temporary closures of EDs due to the unpredicted COVID-19 exposure resulted in an increase in emergency patients' in-hospital mortality rates irrespective of whether they used EMS. Preparing regional EMS systems to cope with new outbreaks is essential to protect the safety of all citizens.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.