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Disagreement Between Emergency Physician and Inpatient Physician Diagnosis of Infection in Older Adults Admitted From the Emergency Department
Academic Emergency Medicine, 08/02/2012
Caterino JM et al. – In older patients admitted from the emergency department (ED), the provisional ED diagnosis and the inpatient diagnosis of an acute infection often disagree. In this sample, 18% of older ED patients diagnosed with infection during an ED stay were not diagnosed as infected by the inpatient physician. Regarding infection types, EPs were poor at diagnosing bacteremia and overdiagnosed pulmonary infections. Emergency physician (EP) diagnosis of skin and soft tissue infection generally agreed with the inpatient physician. There was also disagreement regarding presence of Urinary tract infection (UTI), but the true nature of this difference is unclear from the data obtained in this study.