Brandon C. Maughan MD, MHS, MSHP , Alexa Redmond MD, MPH , Yoona Shim BS , Nick Patrick MD , Mike J. Hildebrand , Bory Kea MD , Esther K. Choo MD, MPH , Angela F. Jarman MD, MPH
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Study Objective
Female patients experience delays in diagnostic testing for major cardiovascular diseases such as myocardial infarction and stroke. The objective of this study was to assess sex differences in the time to initial diagnostic testing among emergency department (ED) patients evaluated for pulmonary embolism (PE).
Methods
The sample included 15,038 adult patients evaluated for PE in 3 EDs from 2017 to 2023. The primary outcome was the time from ED arrival to the first order of a diagnostic test. Secondary outcomes included time to CT scan completion and time to admission for patients diagnosed with PE. Data on patient demographics, medical history, diagnostic test orders, and ED-operational factors were extracted from the electronic medical record. We performed survival analysis with a Cox proportional hazards model using an elastic net regression strategy for variable selection. Poisson regression with robust standard errors was used to measure the average marginal association of female sex with time to first PE test order.
Results
Female sex was associated with a slower time to first PE test (hazard ratio (HR) 0.92 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.88, 0.95], p<0.001) with an average delay of 7.2 minutes [95% CI 4.6, 9.8] compared to male patients. Secondary outcomes noted similar delays to CT scan completion (HR 0.85 [95% CI 0.8, 0.89], average 14.1 minutes [95% CI 9.3, 18.8]) and hospital admission (HR 0.83 [95% CI 0.71, 0.98], average 18.7 minutes [95% CI 1, 36.4]) for female patients compared to males.
Conclusions
Female patients experience slower times to diagnostic testing for PE in the emergency department. Future research should examine sex-associated delays to anticoagulation and other treatments.
期刊介绍:
Clinical Therapeutics provides peer-reviewed, rapid publication of recent developments in drug and other therapies as well as in diagnostics, pharmacoeconomics, health policy, treatment outcomes, and innovations in drug and biologics research. In addition Clinical Therapeutics features updates on specific topics collated by expert Topic Editors. Clinical Therapeutics is read by a large international audience of scientists and clinicians in a variety of research, academic, and clinical practice settings. Articles are indexed by all major biomedical abstracting databases.