Academic emergency medicine : official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine
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Multicenter Study
Serious diagnoses at revisits in children discharged from the emergency department with back pain.
Back pain is often benign but can be a harbinger for serious pathology. Little is known about the outcome in children with back pain but no serious diagnoses detected at the initial visit. We sought to estimate the rate of serious diagnoses at revisits among children initially discharged from the emergency department (ED) with back pain. ⋯ In pediatric patients discharged from the ED with a diagnosis of back pain and no serious or trauma diagnoses, there is a low rate of serious pathology on revisits. Of the serious diagnoses identified, high-acuity diseases were rare. For the subset of patients with clinical suspicion for serious pathology but none identified at the index visit, this represents an opportunity for further research to optimize their management.