Difficulty breathing: agreement of paramedic and emergency physician diagnoses.

Objective: To determine the diagnostic accuracy of paramedics treating patients who have called an ambulance for "difficulty breathing."

Methods: A retrospective study of all ambulance call reports generated by one ambulance over a one-year period with the dispatch complaint of "difficulty breathing" taken to the hospital. The paramedic diagnosis on the call report was compared with the emergency department (ED) physician diagnosis, which was used as the "gold standard.