Background: The numbers of people attending emergency departments (EDs) at hospitals are increasing. We aimed to analyse trends in ED attendance at a Swiss university hospital between 2002 and 2012, focussing on age-related differences and hospital admission criteria.
Methods: We used hospital administrative data for all patients aged ≥16 years who attended the ED (n=298,306) at this university hospital between 1 January 2002, and 31 December 2012.