Purpose:
To analyze emergency room ophthalmology consults duringevenings and weekends with respect to number and nature of consultsand their distribution over the week.
Methods:
Prospective, observational data collection during athree–month period at a tertiary care hospital. Threefirst year ophthalmology residents were assigned the majorityof primary calls, and phone triage during this time was discouraged.
Results:
In a three–month period, a total of 158 consultswere seen. Each of the residents saw a similar number of patients.However, the problems individual residents encountered werenot the same. The busiest day was Saturday with an average of3.4 consults per Saturday. The least busy call night was Mondaywith an average of one consult per Monday. Overall the mostcommon problems were related to trauma and anterior segmentinjuries. The two most frequent diagnoses were corneal abrasionand orbital fracture (each 13.3%) followed by corneal foreignbody, corneal ulcer and consult requests to rule out intra–ocularinfection (each 5.7%). Corneal abrasions were just as likelyin female as males, but orbital fractures were twice as likelyin males.
Conclusions:
The most common reason for eye emergency room consultswas due to trauma, and the two most common diagnoses were cornealabrasion and orbital fracture. This is consistent with priorstudies of emergency room visits. Saturdays were three timesas busy as Mondays. This is not surprising since trauma is morelikely to occur on a weekend night than during the workweek.
Keywords: clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: health care delivery/economics/manpower • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: prevalence/incidence • trauma