[Repeat consultations in pediatric hospital emergencies].

The objectives of this study were to analyze the social and clinical aspects of the infant and child population who excessively utilize the hospital emergency services. To this end, the clinical histories of 130 children admitted to a pediatric hospital have been analyzed. These children were between the ages of 2 months and 10 years and had 10 or more visits to the emergency room or had more than 4 visits during the same year. The control group was arbitrarily composed of 270 children admitted to the same service during the same period of time. We found that in the study group the sociocultural level was low in 71% and 17% had serious social deprivation (significant differences with the control population, p < 0.05). Twenty percent had at least one previous febrile convulsion (p < 0.001) and 33% had more than four hospital admissions. No significant differences in the number of urgent consultations were found between the different days of the week no between the different months. The most frequent diagnosis was upper respiratory tract infections. The number of consultations was higher (p < 0.05) in children with serious social deprivation, chronic pathology, multiple hospital admissions and whose home was near the hospital. We conclude that children with reiterative consultations to the hospital emergency services usually have a social level lower than the control group. Most of these consultations are caused by banal problems and the children are subjected to an excessive number of analytical and radiological tests. Therefore, adequate health education is necessary among these sociocultural level groups in order to avoid using the emergency services as primary attendance consultations.