Emergency Department Neurosurgical Consultations in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Objective: To reveal the characteristics of patients in need of neurosurgery by examining neurosurgery consultations within the emergency department (ED) admissions of a tertiary academic hospital.Methods: This is a retrospective, single-centre observational study. Patients admitted to the ED between 01.01.2022 -31.12.2022 and consulted to the neurosurgery department were identified through the hospital computer system and included in the study. The demographic information of the patients, mode of admission to the ED, the reasons for admission, the time of admission, the number of brain computed tomography (CT) scans, whether they underwent surgery or not, and the mortality results were recorded.Results: A total of 441 neurosurgery consultations were examined. Fall 35.6% (n=157) and traffic accident 16.6% (n=73) were the most common reasons for consultation. It was observed that 92.5% (n=408) of the patients had a brain CT scan, and 19.5% (n=86) had two or more brain CTs. It was determined that 12.7% (n=56) of the patients consulted to neurosurgery were operated on, and 4.1% (n=18) of the patients' hospital admissions resulted in death. Only 53.7% (n=237) of the patients who underwent neurosurgery consultation were discharged from the ED. It was determined that significantly more Neurosurgery consultations were requested during working hours (p = 0.013).Conclusions: Most consultation calls from the ED to neurosurgery are for trauma patients. Brain CT examination is frequently used in neurosurgical patient evaluation. As a result of the consultations, almost half of the patients are hospitalized. Emergency physicians can select patients who need neurosurgery well.