1. [A descriptive study of intrahospital consultation to a neurological department].
- Author
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Más Sesé G, Hernández Hortelano E, González Caballero G, Martín Bautista D, Plaza Macías I, Sola D, and Alom Poveda J
- Subjects
- Adult, Aged, Female, Hospitals, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Nervous System Diseases diagnosis, Nervous System Diseases physiopathology, Retrospective Studies, Hospital Departments statistics & numerical data, Neurology, Referral and Consultation
- Abstract
Introduction: Intrahospital consultation (IC) is a little analyzed activity within daily neurologist hospital care. It entails an extra investment of time and resources. This study aims to describe the number and characteristics of the IC to a neurological department in our setting and to emphasize its importance within daily neurological health care., Methods: We performed an eighteen-month retrospective study of the requests for consultations received during this period in the Neurology Service of the Hospital General Universitario. The following variables were analyzed: demographic information, number and type of IC, time of response, syndromic diagnosis, complementary tests requested and resolution of patients., Results: 224 IC in 210 patients were seen. The average time of response was 1.57 days, although it was modified because of type of IC (normal: 1.7 days; for preference: 1.5 days; urgent: 0.2 days). The specialities that requested most consultations were cardiology (12.9%) and internal medicine (12.5 %). The most frequent reasons for consultation were: signs and symptoms (27.2%), focal neurological deficit (22.8%) and cognitive impairment (17.9%). CT scan and MRI were the most common complementary tests. A total of 25.4% of patients were referred to neurology outpatient clinic for follow-up., Conclusions: IC is an infrastudied activity in the literature. We consider it necessary to analyze this kind of care in every hospital in order to improve the organization and the planning of the day-to-day hospital activity
- Published
- 2006