C-reactive protein and emergency department seven days revisit

Abstract

Background: Emergency department (ED) revisit might be partially preventable. C-reactive protein (CRP) is an inflammatory biomarker which is commonly used as screening tool in the ED. We sought to evaluate the association between CRP level in patients visiting emergency department and 7 days revisit after discharge.

Methods: A historical cohort study of all patients who visited the internal division of the emergency department between June 2007 and July 2017 and had a CRP test. New ED visit was defined when neither any emergency department visit nor any hospital admission was recorded in our files during the previous 90 days. Univariate and multivariate models were used to evaluate the association between CRP and 7 days ED revisit.

Results: The study included 135,476 patients with 173,443 new visits. In 101,181 (58.3%) visits the patients were released and 7077 (7%) of them were revisited in 7 days. Even mild elevated CRP (5-25 mg/L) was independently associated with significant risk for revisit (OR 1.27, 95% CI 1.20-1.35).

Conclusion: CRP is an independent predictor for 7 days ED revisit and should be considered at the time of discharge. Prediction models for ED revisit should include CRP as a potential predictor in their models.

Keywords: C-reactive protein; Emergency department; Return visits; Revisit.