Burden of emergency conditions and emergency care usage: new estimates from 40 countries

Objective

To estimate the global and national burden of emergency conditions, and compare them to emergency care usage rates.

Methods

We coded all 291 Global Burden of Disease 2010 conditions into three categories to estimate emergency burden: conditions that, if not addressed within hours to days of onset, commonly lead to serious disability or death; conditions with common acute decompensations that lead to serious disability...