Comparison of patients with and without any adverse event (AE) presenting to four Capital District Health Authority emergency departments (EDs) November 2007 to October 2008
| Characteristics | Type of ED visit | ||||
| Procedure-related AEs | Drug-related AEs | Device-Related AEs | Any AE | Non-AE | |
| n=1133 | n=673 | n=63 | n=1870 | n=140563 | |
| No (%)† | No (%)† | No (%)† | No (%)† | No (%)† | |
| Demographics | |||||
| Male* | 523 (46.2) | 285 (42.3) | 36 (57.1) | 844 (45.1) | 67,287 (47.9) |
| Female | 610 (53.8) | 388 (57.7) | 27 (42.9) | 1026 (54.9) | 73276 (52.1) |
| Age in years, median (IQR‡)** | 49 (35 to 63) | 37 (22 to 51) | 60 (33 to 74) | 45 (29 to 60) | 43 (26 to 60) |
| Transported by emergency medical services§*** | 122 (10.8) | 253 (37.6) | 16 (25.4) | 391 (20.9) | 18414 (13.1) |
| Site | |||||
| Tertiary care hospital | 660 (58.3) | 287 (42.6) | 43 (68.3) | 990 (52.9) | 58512 (41.6) |
| Community hospital 1 | 279 (24.6) | 251 (37.3) | 9 (14.3) | 540 (28.9) | 39176 (27.9) |
| Community health centre | 78 (6.9) | 72 (10.7) | 4 (6.3) | 154 (8.2) | 26014 (18.5) |
| Community hospital 2 | 116 (10.2) | 63 (9.4) | 7 (11.1) | 186 (10.0) | 16,861 (12.0) |
| CTAS¶ triage level*** | |||||
| Emergent or urgent | 608 (53.7) | 571 (84.8) | 53 (84.1) | 1232 (65.9) | 75955 (54.1% of 140485)†† |
| Less or non-urgent | 525 (46.3) | 102 (15.2) | 10 (15.9) | 638 (34.1) | 64530 (45.9) |
| ED length of stay in hours, median (IQR)*** | 2.8 (1.5 to 4.7) | 4.5 (2.6 to 8.6) | 5.0 (2.7 to 7.4) | 3.4 (1.9 to 5.9) | 3.1 (1.8 to 5.0) |
| Admitted to hospital*** | 199 (17.6) | 102 (15.2) | 23 (36.5) | 324 (17.3) | 13313 (9.5) |
| ICU admission*** | 7 (0.6) | 34 (5.1) | 0 | 41 (2.2) | 571 (0.4) |
Significant at: *p<0.05; **p<0.005; ***p<0.0001.
↵† Unless otherwise specified.
↵‡ Interquartile range.
↵§ Includes Air & Ground Ambulance.
↵¶ Canadian Triage and Acuity Scale (emergent or urgent=CTAS Level I–III; Less or non-urgent=CTAS Level IV–V); differences between the groups (any AE and no AE) were compared using the χ2 test for categorical data, an unpaired t test for normally distributed continuous data and a Mann–Whitney U test for data that were not normally distributed.
↵†† Number with information recorded.