How vital are the vital signs? a multi-center observational study from XXXX of Pakistan.

@entity1 @entity662 @entity341 @entity542 @entity294 @entity2613 @entity221
BACKGROUND: Vital signs play a critical role in prioritizing @entity1 in @entity341 ( @entity341 ), and are the foundation of most triage methods and disposition decisions. This study was conducted to determine the frequency of vital signs documentation anytime during emergency department treatment and to explore if abnormal vital signs were associated with the likelihood of admission for a set of common presenting complaints. METHODS: Data were collected over a four-month period from the @entity341 of seven urban tertiary care hospitals in Pakistan. The variables included age, sex, hospital type (government run vs. private), presenting complaint, @entity2613 vital signs, and final disposition. @entity1 who were >12 years of age were included in the analysis. The data were analyzed to describe the proportion of @entity1 with documented vitals signs, which was then crossed-tabulated with top the ten presenting complaints to identify high-acuity @entity1 and correlation with their admission status. RESULTS: A total of 274,436 @entity1 were captured in the Pakistan National Emergency Department Surveillance (Pak-NEDS), out of which 259,288 @entity1 were included in our study. Vital signs information was available for 90,569 (34.9%) @entity1 and the most commonly recorded vitals sign was pulse (25.7%). Important information such as level of consciousness was missing in the majority of @entity1 with @entity542 . Based on available information, only 13.3% with @entity662 , 12.8% with @entity221 and 12.8% @entity1 with @entity294 could be classified as high-acuity. In addition, hospital admission rates were two- to four-times higher among @entity1 with abnormal vital signs, compared with those with normal vital signs. CONCLUSION: Most @entity1 seen in the @entity341 in Pakistan did not have any documented vital signs during their visit. Where available, the presence of abnormal vital signs were associated with higher chances of admission to the hospital for the most common presenting symptoms.
