Transfer practices and outcomes for suspected appendicitis from community hospitals to a paediatric tertiary emergency department
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Children with suspected appendicitis are often transferred from community emergency departments (EDs) across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to a Toronto paediatric tertiary-care ED due to inconsistent access to, and experience with, paediatric ultrasound, surgery, and anaesthesia. Literature on transfer practices and outcomes is sparse. Objective: To investigate transfer patterns and outcomes in children with suspected appendicitis transferred from community EDs to a paediatric tertiary ED. Methods: A retrospective chart review was conducted for children with suspected appendicitis transferred from 19 GTA community EDs to a Toronto paediatric tertiary-care ED from October 1, 2021, to September 30, 2022. Primary outcome was the proportion of children with appendicitis. Secondary outcomes included rates of ultrasound repetition and surgical consultation post-transfer. All transferred children were included; descriptive statistics were performed. Results: Of the 282 children (mean age 7 years, 60% male), 164 (58%) were diagnosed with appendicitis, while 118 (42%) children were discharged without. Among those without appendicitis, 100 (85%) had a community ultrasound; 77 (77%) were read as positive for appendicitis, and 89 (89%) of the community-imaged patients had repeat ultrasound after transfer. Among the 164 children diagnosed with appendicitis, 144 (88%) had a community ultrasound, with 78 (54%) undergoing repeat ultrasound after transfer. Surgical consultation in the paediatric ED occurred for all children with appendicitis and for 26/118 (22%) of those without. Conclusions: Nearly half of the children transferred for suspected appendicitis were discharged without appendicitis, and most community ultrasounds required re-imaging. Opportunities exist to optimize transfer pathways and ultrasound resources.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".