Epidemiological profile of pre-hospital care and emergency response time

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. The pre-hospital care system has been in existence since 930 B.C. in the war. In 1940, North American firefighters began the care of the wounded at the scene and transferred the victims to the hospitals, wich gave rise to them. OBJECTIVE. To determine the epidemiological characteristics of the pathologies that required the pre-hospital service and measure the response time from the call to the patient’s attention by the ambulance system from Carlos Andrade Marín Specialty Hospital, period 2017 - 2018. MATERIALS AND METHODS. Retrospective study. Population and known sample of 2 931 patients who received pre-hospital care by hospital ambulances, in coordination with ECU-911, secondary transport was excluded. The data was obtained from the hospital’s Radio Communications Headquarters, analyzed in the Statistical Package program. RESULTS. 58,38% (1 711; 2 931) were of sex male, 22,82% (669; 2 931) 65 years or more, the final condition of patients was stable alive in 92,57% (2 713; 2 931), the most frequent event was trauma at 59,28% (1 737; 2 931) and of these, traffic accidents by 45,13% (784; 1 737), the final destination of care was the transfer of the patient to a health home in 50,60% (1 483; 2 931) despite this 49,40% (1 448; 2 931) was attended to the place where the event. The average response time was 10,2 minutes and the average care provided for each ambulance was one per day. CONCLUSION. Trauma was the pathology that required the most support from a pre-hospital mobile unit, without meeting response times with international standards, but the mortality rate during the transfer was low. The productivity of one ambulance trip per day should be investigated.