Clinical profile of adults presenting to emergency with acute dyspnea

Introduction: Dyspnea is common chief complaint in the emergency department. Over the past decade, the rate of hospitalization for heart failure has increased by 159% in the western countries. Rapidly and accurately determining the etiology of acute dyspnea in patients presenting in emergency is extremely important. The two chief causes of dyspnea, congestive heart failure (CHF) and lung disease, are often difficult to differentiate. Material and Methods: A prospective observational study was conducted on 200 adult patients admitted to emergency with acute dyspnea. Patients having age less than 20 yrs were excluded from the study. Appropriate statistical analysis of the data was performed. Results: Mean age of the patients were 65.3 yrs and males constituted about 53% patients. In our study, 26% patients had length of stay upto 5 days, 50% had length of stay 6-10 days, 15% had length of stay 11-15 days, 4% had length of stay 16-20 days, 1% had length of stay 21-25 days, 2% had length of stay>25 days.
Conclusion: We conclude that acute heart failure constitute the patients presenting to emergency with acute dyspnea. Ischemic heart diseases contribute up to half of these patients. Therefore, we conclude that IHD should be kept as the first differential in patients presenting to emergency with acute dyspnea and should undergo early evaluation to rule out cardiac disease.