Benefits of using imaging techniques for triage in inpatient emergency department

Relevance . Imaging techniques allow to optimize inpatient medical triage in emergency medical care and enhance treatment outcomes. Today, such techniques as automated ECG interpretation (AIECG) and focused ultrasound (FUS) are highly relevant. However, the optimization efficiency in Russia is yet pending a thorough study. Objective . The objective is to assess the efficiency of a three-level medical triage system, evaluating the contribution AIECG and FUS examination. Methods . The study is a retrospective analysis of 1,000 patient cases of emergency medical care, provided by the inpatient emergency department at the Academician I.P. Pavlov First St. Petersburg State Medical University. Medical triage was based on the procedure developed at the Saint-Petersburg I.I. Dzhanelidze Research Institute of Emergency Medicine. All cases were split into categories based on the patient’s outcome (discharge or readmission), days of stay in the department, medical triage score. The collected data underwent statistical analysis. Results and discussion. The median duration of stay per patient in the inpatient emergency department was 229 ± 12 minutes for green, 398.5 ± 19 minutes for yellow flow, and 233 ± 16 minutes for red, with an asymptotic significance p < 0.05. AUC-ROC analysis demonstrated statistically significant improvement in the triage sorting performance once AIECG and FUS were integrated. The area under the curve (AUC) increased to 0.752 compared to 0.581 in triage without imaging (p < 0.005). Conclusion . The study shows that automated ECG interpretation and focused ultrasound allow to optimize medical triage, eventually rendering the three-tier medical triage procedure more efficient.