Accident and Emergency Departments: Children
(asked on 8th February 2018) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the most common reason is for children being admitted to A&E.
The most common reasons for admissions to accident and emergency (A&E) for patients aged 0-17 in the 2016/17 financial year is shown in the table below. This is a count of attendances, not individual patients as the same person may have attended A&E on more than one occasion.
Primary diagnosis | Sum of attendances |
Diagnosis not classifiable | 620,134 |
Dislocation/fracture/joint injury/amputation | 262,848 |
Respiratory conditions | 237,747 |
Sprain/ligament injury | 220,033 |
Head injury | 197,876 |
Soft tissue inflammation | 194,299 |
Laceration | 180,179 |
Contusion/abrasion | 171,086 |
Gastrointestinal conditions | 162,182 |
Ear, nose and throat conditions | 161,860 |
Infectious disease | 144,381 |
Nothing abnormal detected | 101,602 |
Dermatological conditions | 63,756 |
Local infection | 63,152 |
Ophthalmological conditions | 55,118 |
Foreign body | 49,781 |
Urological conditions (inc. cystitis) | 44,846 |
Central nervous system conditions (exc. stroke) | 42,328 |
Muscle/tendon injury | 41,387 |
Burns and scalds | 38,765 |
Poisoning (inc. overdose) | 31,902 |
Allergy (inc. anaphylaxis) | 28,218 |
Psychiatric conditions | 18,425 |
Bites/stings | 16,849 |
Cardiac conditions | 15,071 |
Facio-maxillary conditions | 11,931 |
Gynaecological conditions | 8,077 |
Cerebro-vascular conditions | 6,558 |
Haematological conditions | 5,941 |
Septicaemia | 5,211 |
Diabetes and other endocrinological conditions | 5,069 |
Social problems (including chronic alcoholism and homelessness) | 2,722 |
Other vascular conditions | 2,683 |
Electric shock | 1,588 |
Obstetric conditions | 1,194 |
Visceral injury | 964 |
Nerve injury | 845 |
Vascular injury | 727 |
Near drowning | 543 |
Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), NHS Digital
Notes:
Primary diagnosis: It should be noted that the recording of the diagnosis field within the A&E data set is not mandatory. It is not known to what extent changes over time are as a result of improvements in recording practice.
It should be noted, in 2016/17 there were also approximately 1.4 million attendances classified as ‘null/blank’ and 300,000 classified as ‘Invalid code’.