Abstract

Inmates represent a special minority population susceptible to various health disorders that require special healthcare. Emergency departments (EDs) almost always provide the initial healthcare service for inmates, particularly in Turkey. We aimed herein to assess inmates’ health problems necessitating ED admission and their effect on emergency department crowding. This was a retrospective cross-sectional study performed in the ED of a tertiary healthcare center with some 750.000 yearly admissions. We grouped emergency admissions referred from prisons into surgical, medical, psychiatric, traumatic, and musculoskeletal pain disorders. We reviewed 1250 patients, 95% (n=1187) of which were male and 5% (n=62) female. The most common causes of presentation of inmate patients were internal disorders (51.5%; n=643) and injury (19.6%; n=245). The patients with internal and surgical disorders were higher while those presenting with injury and psychiatric disorders had a significantly lower age (p

Key words: Prison medicine, emergency medicine, minority group