ABSTRACT

The Syrian Civil War began four years ago, has displaced 7.5 million Syrians. As expected, children have been particularly impacted by the refugee crisis. This study aimed to determine the rate of Syrian children admitted to the emergency department. It is also tried to identify their resource needs and their comparison with Turkish children.

We are a multidisciplinary University Pediatric Emergency Department, and seeing about 55,000 patients per year. All patients admitted to our emergency department are grouped and labeled according to their occupation and country of origin. The database was sought for patients admitted between January 1, 2014 and December 31, 2014. All Syrian patients were included. Baseline demographic data (age, gender) and clinical data (admission date, cause of presentation) were obtained. We also evaluated frequency of resource requirements (laboratory, ECG, treatment, specialty consultation etc.), rate of hospitalization and intensive care admission.

Two hundred and seventeen Syrian patients were admitted to our emergency department during the study period. The frequency of Syrian admission was 0.4%. Seventy-two percent (71.9 %, n=156) were male and the mean age was 3.4 ± 4.1 years. We observed that Syrian patients had a significantly higher rate of specialty consultation, hospitalization and intensive care admission compared with Turkish patients, respectively (18% vs. 10%), (14.2% vs. 5.6%) and (4.5% vs.0.3%).

Syrian patients presented to emergency department with more serious illness. This can be explained with the main problems of Syrian refugees such as hunger, lack of hygiene and lack of medical care.

Keywords: Emergency department, Syrian patients, children