Informative usefulness of age, sex and vital signs in the differential diagnosis of disturbed consciousness among 175 emergency outpatients.

Final diagnoses were determined among 175 emergency patients with disturbed consciousness with a Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) of less than 15 and diagnostic usefulness of basic information was assessed using clinico-epidemiological indices. Subject patients included 98 males and 77 females with average age 53.4 years. Final diagnoses were as follows: intracranial lesions in 69 patients (39.4%), metabolic and systemic diseases in 97 (55.4%), mental diseases in 4 (2.3%), and diseases of unknown origin in 5 (2.9%). Cerebrovascular disorders and epilepsy were most frequent among the intracranial lesions, and poisoning, hypoglycemia, acute alcoholism and hypoxic encephalopathy among the metabolic and systemic diseases. Informative usefulness of age, sex and vital sings in diagnosing cerebrovascular disorders was analyzed with the use of ROC curves, showing that cut-off points of age over 60 years and of systolic blood pressure greater than 160 mmHg were most useful.