Impact of Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak on the use of emergency medical resources in febrile patients

Jeong, Hyunho; Jeong, Sikyoung; Oh, Juseok; Woo, Seon Hee; So, Byung Hak; Wee, Jeong Hee; Kim, Ji Hoon; Im, Ji Yong; Choi, Seung Pill; Park, Kyoungnam; Cho, Byul Nim Hee; Hong, Sungyoup

This study aimed to determine the effects of an outbreak of a highly transmittable infectious disease on the use of emergency Impact of MERS outbreak on emergency care resources. Our approach to estimate the increased burden of febrile patients produced by the outbreak of MERS-CoV in Korea provided new insights, unavailable with other approaches. However, this study has several limitations. The main uncertainty stems from the limited data derived from the six emergency centers, as the ED services had no nationwide coverage. The study period was also of short duration and limited to four months, immediately after the end of the MERS outbreak. While the limitations inherent to an analysis using an electronic database are relevant to this study, a large-scale patient registry from multiple centers was surveyed. Study subjects were limited to patients complaining of fever. Patients with elevated body temperature on physical examination were excluded because this study aimed to estimate the effects of febrile complaints that led patients to seek emergency care in emergency centers.