Have you been waiting in the emergency room for more than 5 hours?

Bad news for your chances of survival

A large study in the UK has found how the time you wait to receive emergency care affects your chances of mortality, and has revealed very disturbing findings.

Remember how long you waited for your last visit to the emergency room?

Walla!

health

26/01/2022

Wednesday, 26 January, 2022, 07:12 Updated: 07:31

• Share on Facebook

• Share on WhatsApp

• Share on Twitter

• Share on Email

• Share on general

• Comments

  Comments

Arriving at the emergency room is always a stressful and unpleasant event, and waiting to be tested and treated is often a big part of the deal.

This wait can also have fatal consequences, according to a new and comprehensive study conducted in the UK and illustrates the tragic consequences of waiting over a certain time in the emergency room.

More on Walla!

Recovering?

This is your chance to get infected with Corona again

To the full article

The study was conducted between 2016-2018 (pre-Corona epidemic) and followed 27 million people who came to one of the largest emergency rooms in England at the time.

The average waiting time to receive treatment was a little less than five hours, the researchers found.

This is despite the fact that the operational standard adopted by the health services in the country back in 2004 is a maximum of 4 hours of waiting.

At the end of the study period, the researchers calculated that 434,000 of the emergency room visitors during the 2 years of the study died during the month following the emergency room visit.

However, their likelihood of dying increased significantly if the time they waited in the emergency room exceeded 5 hours.

The aim is that the waiting time should not exceed 4 hours.

The emergency room at Sheba Tel Hashomer Hospital (Photo: Reuven Castro)

A patient who waited 6-8 hours for treatment was 8 percent more likely to die (for whatever reason) over the next 30 days.

That is, for every 82 deaths among those who waited in the emergency room for 6-8 hours, there was one person whose death could probably have been prevented had he received earlier treatment.

If a patient waited more than 8 hours, then his chance of dying during the next month, according to the researchers' calculations, increased by 10 percent.

"If anyone has had a doubt before, that he will not have - a goal of treatment within 4 hours or less is of paramount importance for maintaining patient safety," wrote Dr. Derek Prentis of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine in an article he published about the study.

Do not withstand the load

Similar standards regarding maximum waiting times for emergency care in emergency rooms have been set in other countries around the world, such as the US and Australia, but even there emergency rooms do not always meet this standard, and sometimes do not try hard enough. The corona that began in late 2019 further exacerbated the situation, the researchers estimate.

The corona crisis exacerbated the situation even further.

Crowded emergency room (Photo: Reuven Castro)

More on Walla!

• 8 simple diet rules that will keep you going in these crazy days

• Here's how: 7 signs you may have been sick in Corona

• The natural solution to knee pain is closer than ever - with a refund from the health insurance fund

Although this is an observational study, it means that it only found the link between prolonged waiting in the emergency room and an increased risk of patient mortality - without identifying the exact reasons for it.

However, according to the researchers, there are some plausible explanations for the fact that a delay in receiving emergency treatment can lead to severe and sometimes fatal consequences.

When there are not enough beds available in the emergency room it may result in treatments such as painkillers, antibiotics or emergency surgeries being received with a significant delay.

Prolonged waiting may also lead to the fact that when the patient is already receiving the treatment it is a night time when the hospital works on a limited basis and without a full tombstone of specialists and senior doctors.

All of these risks are of course intensified when the hospital functions at the height of a global epidemic, affecting both the congestion in wards and emergency rooms, and the workforce in the medical staff.

• health

• news

Tags

• Emergency Room

• mortality

• Corona