Registry of Patients With Acute Dyspnea in the Emergency Department
Registry of Patients With Acute Dyspnea in the Emergency Department
This is a prospective registry of patients presenting with acute dyspnea to the emergency
 department of the city hospital in Nuremberg. There is evidence that acute dyspnea is
 associated with a mortality rate of 10%, however acute dyspnea is not perceived as a
 life-threatening condition, both in public and in health care providers. Our aim is to
 describe the patient collective concerning their demographics, baseline characteristics, type
 of referral and disposition, medical care processes and prognosis. Secondly, we want to
 evaluate if the subjective risk assessment of emergency department personnel matches with
 objective risk stratification tools and the actual outcome of the studied patients.
This is a prospective registry of patients presenting with acute dyspnea to the emergency
 department of the city hospital in Nuremberg during May 23th 2013 and October 31th 2013. To
 be included into the registry the patient has to express acute dyspnea. Minor patients are
 not included. The admission documents of the studied patients are accompanied by a
 questionnaire that has to be completed by the triage nurse and the attending physician. The
 questionnaire includes items like professional experience and subjective assessment of
 patient's prognosis. In addition the attending physician has to state if the evaluation of
 medical history was difficult, if previous medication is known and how likely the presence of
 heart failure as underlying condition is. Data of the questionnaire, the patient record and
 the follow up contacts are entered in a SPSS database. Finally, we measure the OPTIMIZE-HF
 score (Abraham et al. 2008) and the PRIDE mortality score (Baggish et al. 2007) in a
 retrospective manner in order to compare the subjective assessments with objective criteria.
Inclusion Criteria:

 -  expression of acute dyspnea in the emergency department

 Exclusion Criteria:

 -  age < 18 years