Compliance With Asthma Guidelines and Association With Outcomes in the Emergency Department of a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital.

Background: Despite the existence of guidelines for treating acute asthma patients in the emergency department (ED), compliance is often poor. We aimed to examine the compliance to treatment guidelines for asthma at our tertiary care teaching hospital's ED and association with re-attendance rates.

Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of electronic patient records of patients above 16 years old who presented to our ED with a primary diagnosis of asthma over a 6 month period in 2012.

Characteristics of patients who made a return visit within 72 hours to the emergency department of a Singapore tertiary hospital.

Introduction: 72-hour emergency department (ED) reattendance is a widely-used quality indicator for quality of care and patient safety. It is generally assumed that patients who return within 72 hours of ED discharge (72-hour re-attendees) received inadequate treatment or evaluation. The current literature also suggests considerable variation in probable causes of 72-hour ED reattendances internationally.