Introduction:

a high proportion of newborn visits to emergency departments correspond to non-urgent conditions and concerns regarding newborn care. Our aim was to assess the appropriate of emergency department use in newborns.

Materials and methods:

analysis of discharge summaries of newborns that attended the emergency department of the Hospital Marina Salud de Denia (Alicante, Spain) in year 2014 and the appropriateness of emergency department use based on newly established criteria: hospital admission, referral, triage and diagnostic testing.

Results:

emergency services were used by newborns for conditions considered non-urgent, crying, irritability or malaise (32.08%), and vomiting or regurgitation of the newborn (13.21%), and the most frequent discharge diagnosis was normal health (20%). Based on the appropriateness criteria established for the use of neonatal emergency services, 63.50% of the reasons for neonatal visits were inappropriate.

Conclusions:

most neonatal visits were categorised as inappropriate use of emergency services and should therefore have been managed in primary care.

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