ObjectiveTo investigate the epidemiological situation of pre-hospital emergency elderly and non-elderly patients in Chengdu and explore the characteristics of pre-hospital care in the city.MethodAll pre-hospital care records in the Chengdu 120 Emergency System Database in 2017 were retrospectively collected. According to the age of the patients, they were divided into the elderly group (≥60 years old) and the non-elderly group (<60 years old). The disease spectrum, the trends of the number of emergency help calls, the changes in different diseases over time, as well as the disease composition of the patients who died in the two groups were compared.ResultsA total of 179 387 pre-hospital emergency patients were enrolled, including 59 980 elderly patients and 119 407 non-elderly patients. Most of them were male patients in both groups. Patients in the elderly group were mainly between 60 to 89 years old, and the ones in the non-elderly group were mainly between 18 to 59 years old. The pre-hospital emergency patients in the elderly group presented with trauma, nervous system, symptoms and signs, and cardiovascular system diseases mainly, accounting for 29.19%, 14.64%, 13.82%, and 12.86%, respectively. In the non-elderly group, trauma, acute poisoning, and symptoms and signs were predominant, accounting for 50.89%, 10.98%, and 10.08%, respectively. Among the pre-hospital deaths, the number in the elderly group was the larger, accounting for 69.61% (7 043 cases); the mortality rate was 11.74%, with sudden death (28.70%), cardiovascular diseases (25.95%), and respiratory diseases (16.07%) being the major causes. The pre-hospital mortality rate of non-elderly patients was 2.58%, mainly including traumatic diseases (35.41%), sudden death (unknown cause of death) (25.33%), and cardiovascular diseases (17.56%). The number of emergency help calls in the elderly group began to increase gradually from September, reaching a peak in December and hitting the trough in February. While in the non-elderly group, the peak of the emergency help calls appeared in July, and it also fell to the lowest in February. The proportion of the number of emergency help calls in the elderly group was higher in January to February and October to December; while the peak in non-elderly group was in July. The number of emergency help calls in the elderly group were mainly concentrated in the daytime (08:00 to 20:00). In the non-elderly group, the changes in the number of emergency help calls were similar to that of the elderly, however, with another peak (20:00 to 24:00). The proportion of the number of emergency help calls in the elderly group was 06:00 to 09:59, and the peak time of the non-elderly group was in the early morning (00:00 to 04:59) and night (20:00 to 23:59).ConclusionsThe number of pre-hospital care for elderly and non-elderly patients has its own characteristics in terms of the time and the distribution of disease spectrum. Trauma and cardiovascular diseases are the most common causes of pre-hospital care and death in Chengdu. And the pre-hospital mortality in the elderly group is much larger than that in non-elderly group. Relevant departments can allocate emergency resources rationally, and focus on improving the on-site rescue capacity towards related diseases.
Interfacility transport of critically ill children is an important part of pre-hospital emergency care. The development of 5th generation mobile networks has brought revolutionary changes to emergency medicine, which can realize real-time sharing of information between hospitals and transfer ambulance units. In order to give full play to the advantages of superior medical institutions in diagnosis and treatment technology, equipment resources, and realize the safe and fast transfer of critically ill children, the technical specifications for the construction of interfacility transport of critically ill children’s ambulances with 5th generation mobile networks are specially formulated to standardize the team building, equipment and materials, transport process and quality control requirements for critically ill children’s ambulance transport, so as to reduce the fatality rate of critically ill children and improve the prognosis.