BackgroundEmergency departments handle a large proportion of acute patients. In 2007, it was recommended centralizing the Danish healthcare system and establishing emergency departments as the main common entrance for emergency patients. Since this reorganization, few studies describing the emergency patient population in this new setting have been carried out and none describing diagnoses and mortality. Hence, we aimed to investigate diagnoses and 1- and 30-day mortality of patients in the emergency departments in the North Denmark Region during 2014–2016.MethodsPopulation-based historic cohort study in the North Denmark Region (580,000 inhabitants) of patients with contact to emergency departments during 2014–2016. The study included patients who were referred by general practitioners (daytime and out-of-hours), by emergency medical services or who were self-referred.Primary diagnoses (ICD-10) were retrieved from the regional Patient Administrative System. For non-specific diagnoses (ICD-10 chapter ‘Symptoms and signs’ and ‘Other factors’), we searched the same hospital stay for a specific diagnosis and used this, if one was given. We performed descriptive analysis reporting distribution and frequency of diagnoses. Moreover, 1- and 30-day mortality rate estimates were performed using the Kaplan-Meier estimator.ResultsWe included 290,590 patient contacts corresponding to 166 ED visits per 1000 inhabitants per year. The three most frequent ICD-10 chapters used were ‘Injuries and poisoning’ (38.3% n = 111,274), ‘Symptoms and signs’ (16.1% n = 46,852) and ‘Other factors’ (14.52% n = 42,195). Mortality at day 30 (95% confidence intervals) for these chapters were 0.86% (0.81–0.92), 3.95% (3.78–4.13) and 2.84% (2.69–3.00), respectively.The highest 30-day mortality were within chapters ‘Neoplasms’ (14.22% (12.07–16.72)), ‘Endocrine diseases’ (8.95% (8.21–9.75)) and ‘Respiratory diseases’ (8.44% (8.02–8.88)).ConclusionsPatients in contact with the emergency department receive a wide range of diagnoses within all chapters of ICD-10, and one third of the diagnoses given are non-specific. Within the non-specific chapters, we found a 30-day mortality, surpassing several of the more organ specific ICD-10 chapters.Trial registrationObservational study - no trial registration was performed.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12913-018-3361-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Objective Substance use disorder is highly prevalent among individuals with mental disorders. However, it remains largely unknown whether this is also the case for “food addiction”—a phenotype characterized by an addiction‐like attraction to predominantly highly processed foods with a high content of refined carbohydrates and fat. Therefore, the primary aim of this study was to estimate the weighted prevalence of food addiction among individuals with mental disorders. Method A total of 5,000 individuals aged 18–62 were randomly drawn from eight categories of major mental disorders from the Danish Psychiatric Central Research Register and invited to participate in an online questionnaire‐based survey, which included the Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0. Data on health care and sociodemographics from the Danish registers were linked to all invitees—enabling comprehensive attrition analysis and calculation of the weighted prevalence of food addiction. Results A total of 1,394 (27.9%) invitees participated in the survey. Across all diagnostic categories, 23.7% met the criteria for food addiction. The weighted prevalence of food addiction was highest among individuals with eating disorders (47.7%, 95%CI: 41.2–54.2), followed by affective disorders (29.4%, 95%CI: 22.9–36.0) and personality disorders (29.0%, 95%CI: 22.2–35.9). When stratifying on sex, the prevalence of food addiction was higher among women in most diagnostic categories. Discussion Food addiction is highly prevalent among individuals with mental disorders, especially in those with eating disorders, affective disorders and personality disorders. Food addiction may be an important target for efforts aimed at reducing obesity among individuals with mental disorders.

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The prevalence of obesity was higher among middle-aged adults (42.8%) than among younger adults (35.7%).• The prevalence of obesity was higher among youth aged 6-11 years (18.4%) and adolescents aged 12-19 years (20.6%) compared with children aged 2-5 years (13.9%).• The overall prevalence of obesity was higher among non-Hispanic black and Hispanic adults than among non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic Asian adults. The same pattern was seen among youth.

Objective Food addiction is a phenotype characterised by an addiction‐like attraction to highly processed foods. Adolescence is a sensitive period for developing addictive disorders. Therefore, a valid measure to assess food addiction in adolescents is needed. Accordingly, the aim of the study was to establish a categorical scoring option for the full version of the Yale Food Addiction Scale for Children 2.0 (YFAS‐C 2.0), and to psychometrically validate the full YFAS‐C 2.0. Method The data stem from the Food Addiction Denmark (FADK) Project. Random samples of 3750 adolescents from the general population aged 13–17 years, and 3529 adolescents with a history mental disorder of the same age were invited to participate in a survey including the full version of the YFAS‐C 2.0. A confirmatory factor analysis was carried out and the weighted prevalence of food addiction was estimated. Results The confirmatory factor analysis of the YFAS‐C 2.0 supported a one‐factor model in both samples. The weighted prevalence of food addiction was 5.0% in the general population, and 11.2% in the population with a history of mental disorder. Conclusions The full version of the YFAS‐C 2.0 is a psychometrically valid measure for assessing clinically significant food addiction in adolescents.

Background The number of patients calling for an ambulance increases. A considerable number of patients receive a non-specific diagnosis at discharge from the hospital, and this could imply less serious acute conditions, but the mortality has only scarcely been studied. The aim of this study was to examine the most frequent sub-diagnoses among patients with hospital non-specific diagnoses after calling 112 and their subsequent mortality. Methods A historical cohort study of patients brought to the hospital by ambulance after calling 112 in 2007-2014 and diagnosed with a non-specific diagnosis, chapter R or Z, in the International Classification of Diseases, 10 th edition (ICD-10). 1-day and 30-day mortality was analyzed by survival analyses and compared by the log-rank test. Results We included 74,847 ambulance runs in 53,937 unique individuals. The most frequent diagnoses were ‘unspecified disease’ (Z039), constituting 47.0 % (n 35,279). In children 0-9 years old, ‘febrile convulsions’ was the most frequent non-specific diagnosis used in 54.3 % (n 1,602). Overall, 1- and 30-day mortality was 2.2 % (n 1,205) and 6.0 % (n 3,258). The highest mortality was in the diagnostic group ‘suspected cardiovascular disease’ (Z035) and ‘unspecified disease’ (Z039) with 1-day mortality 2.6 % (n 43) and 2.4 % (n 589), and 30 day mortality of 6.32 % (n 104) and 8.1 % (n 1,975). Conclusion Among patients calling an ambulance and discharged with non-specific diagnoses the 1- and 30-day mortality, despite modest mortality percentages lead to a high number of deaths.

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