 |
|
|
|
 Emergency Department Visits for Asthma
"An emergency department visit for asthma is a loud and clear signal that a patient's asthma is out of control. That 11% of insured Oregonians with asthma have at least one emergency department visit per year for asthma is too many. This shows a need for better management for all patients with asthma."
- Mel Kohn, M.D.
Oregon State Epidemiologist
NOTES: Some emergency department visits for asthma are for routine care rather than urgent care. This document does not distinguish between such visits, because the datasets cited are either unable to distinguish between these two types of visits, or have not been analyzed in that way. National rates are age-adjusted to the 2000 population National Scope
In 2000, nearly two million emergency department (ED) visits in the United States were from asthma [a]. These represented 1.7% of all ED visits that year, and 14.4% of ED visits that had a primary diagnosis of respiratory disease (ICD-9-CM of 460-519).
Asthma was the twelfth most common diagnosis for ED visits in 2000. Of these top diagnoses, no other could be as easily prevented as an asthma attack. In addition, experts agree that the ED is not the best place to get appropriate asthma care. Visiting the ED for an asthma attack contributes to dis-jointed care. ED visits also do not solve the underlying problem in many cases. Relapse estimates for adults who receive care for asthma in an ED range up to 45% within 8 weeks [b], and estimates for kids are equally discouraging.
![Figure 1: Age-adjusted Annual Rate of ED Visits for Asthma by Age: U.S., 1992-1999 [c]](/DHS/ph/asthma/view/02jul1.gif)
As illustrated in Figure 1, the overall rate of ED visits for asthma increased in the U.S. from 1992 to 1995, but has hovered around the same rate since then. In 1999, the rate of ED visits for asthma was 73.3/10,000 persons. During the same year, the asthma ED visit rate for African Americans (174.3/10,000) was almost three times that for whites (59.4/10,000) [see April 2002 issue of A View of Asthma in Oregon] and children under 5 years old had the highest rates of any age group (141.8/10,000). Both of these trends have been consistent since data collection began in the early 1990's.
|
|
|
