Patients With Syncope in a German Emergency Department

Abstract

Many patients presenting with syncope to a German ED are elderly, and multiple comorbidities are common. Technology-intensive testing in patients with syncope has a low diagnostic yield and consumes resources. The introduction of standards for the evaluation of syncope in the ED would be helpful.

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“…Syncope consitutes 1-2% of all emergency department admissions and 6% of all hospitalizations [1]. Baron-Esquivias et al and Guldner et al reported that women constituted %51.6 and 50.4% of the study populations, respectively [18,19]. The gender distribution of our subjects was in accordance with the literature.…”

“…These results are in agreement with the literature. In accordance with the literature, our study showed that the most common syncope type was vasovagal syncope while the least common type was syncope owing to internal diseases [3,5,19,24,26]. Slight differences between our results and others' results may be due to the differences between the developmental level of the study centers and to the inter-societal differences.…”

“…The gender distribution of our subjects was in accordance with the literature. Previous studies have shown that syncope may be encountered in any age group and mortality and morbidity rates progressively increase with increasing age [9,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. The mean age of our study population was 48.1±20.6 years.…”

Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Following Use of a Water Pipe/Hookah

“…Syncope often results in emergency hospital admission and has a broad spectrum of associated differential diagnoses (4,5). Although the term "syncope" does have a precise definition (6), there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding its use in connection with intoxication in both clinical practice and the international literature.…”

The Prevalence and Prognostic Significance of Near Syncope and Syncope

“…S yncope is defined as a transient loss of consciousness caused by short-term global cerebral underperfusion, which can be accompanied by a loss of muscle tone (1,2). Although many causes of syncope are benign and self-limiting, some events are associated with significant morbidity and mortality (1,(3)(4)(5). Up to 3% of emergency department consultations are due to syncope (6)(7)(8), and in Germany more than 70% of the affected patients are admitted as inpatients (5).…”