Impact of diagnostic techniques on the length of stay in emergency medicine

Abstract

Emergency medicine is a new discipline that is rapidly developing and spreading in medical practice. The central themes of emergency medicine are resuscitation, laboratory and diagnostic imaging. In the emergency department, different parameters can be associated with a prolonged Length of Stay (LOS) as, for example; the protact use of computed tomography (TAC), radiology techniques, the need for advice from external consultants (1). To improve the efficiency of the emergency department and the assessment effectiveness of the state of healthy patient, it is important to identify the factors that affect the LOS (2).This work was based on the evaluation of the impact of demographic factors, clinical information and diagnostic techniques on the LOS in emergency medicine (LOS-ED). The dataset was carried out at the Emergency Medicine Unit of the hospital “San Giovanni di Dio e Ruggi d'Aragona” of Salerno. Multiple Linear Regression model was optimized considering the hospital stay after diagnostic procedures (dLOS) as dependent variable.