Original ArticleNonspecific abdominal pain is a safe diagnosis
Section snippets
Patients and methods
The geographical location of the Surgical unit at the Royal Aberdeen Children's Hospital (RACH) makes it is the sole pediatric surgical unit receiving emergency surgical admissions from the childhood population of Grampian region. It admits all children under 16 years of age plus some older patients with significant developmental delay. Patients are admitted directly following referral from the general practitioner, or via self presentation to the emergency department. The bespoke Expandable
Results
Of these 32,534 admissions, 14,467 (44.5%) were emergency admissions. Of note 1314 patients were diagnosed with appendicitis in that period, of which 1289 underwent appendicectomy (4.0% of elective and emergency population).
3323 (23%) of the 14,467 emergency admissions had a discharge diagnosis of nonspecific abdominal pain (NSAP). The mean age of patients admitted as an emergency with NSAP was 9.7 (range 0.1–16.2). Male to female admissions were 1745:1578 (M:F = 1:1.1) and the average length of
Discussion
This study used prospectively collected, population-based data to record and assess admissions to a single surgical unit over a 22 year period. There were three main outcomes. Firstly, 23% of emergency surgical admissions had a discharge diagnosis of NSAP. Secondly at 2.3%, there is a low <30 day readmission rate for patients diagnosed with NSAP. Thirdly, a very small proportion of children (0.6%) diagnosed with NSAP required further invasive investigations or operative procedures within 3 months
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Professor Youngson for initiating the EMAS database and expert assistance with preparation of the manuscript.
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