OPEN ACCESS Jacobs Journal of Emergency Medicine Adolescent Presentations to Adult Hospital Emergency Departments: Systematic Review Omar Noori 1,4 , Amith Shetty 2,3 , Katharine Steinbeck 1,4* 1 Academic Department of Adolescent Medicine, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney, Australia 2 Department of Emergency Medicine, Westmead Hospital, Sydney, Australia 3 NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Critical Infection, Westmead Millennium institute 4 Discipline of Paediatrics and Adolescent Health, Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney *Corresponding author: Dr. Katharine Steinbeck, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Corner of Hawkesbury Road and Hainsworth Street, Westmead, Sydney, NSW 2145, Australia, Tel: +61 2 9845 2507, Email: kate.steinbeck@health.nsw.gov.au Received: 07-31-2016 Accepted: 09-26-2016 Published: 11-25-2016 Copyright: © 2016 Katharine Steinbeck Sysematic Review Cite this article: Katharine Steinbeck. Adolescent Presentations to Adult Hospital Emergency Departments: Systematic Review. J J Emergen Med. 2016, 3(4): 032. Abstract Background: Adolescents access either paediatric or adult emergency departments (EDs) for acute care and other health needs. Anecdotally adolescent management is perceived as burdensome in adult EDs, with complex chronic illness cited as a specific issue. This systematic review aimed to describe what is known of adolescent presentations made to adult hospital EDs. Methods: The systematic review was conducted according to PRISMA Guidelines. OVID-MEDLINE, EMBASE, WEB OF SCI- ENCE and CINAHL was searched from the beginning of the databases up to January 2016 for peer-reviewed journal articles reporting on 10-19 year-old presentations made to adult hospital EDs. It was not always possible within a dataset to isolate the 10-19 year-old data. Endpoints pertaining to demographic, diagnostic and other characteristics were examined. Results: Four manuscripts of single and multi-site studies were included, all of North-American origin with a total partici- pant sample of 8,415,366 adolescents. Physical injury was the most common cause of presentation, accounting for near- ly 50% of presentations. The prevalence of chronic illness represented 35.2% of the sample in one study. Another study reported 22% of their sample was triaged as non-urgent and 52.2% of all visits occurred at night. Conclusion: The limited findings are consistent with global adolescent morbidity data. Characterisation of adolescent-spe- cific presentations to adult-specific emergency care settings is limited by inability to separate datasets into the specific age group. We were not able to confirm on data available that acute presentations on the background of chronic illness made up a significant management load. Keywords: Adolescent; Emergency Department; Adult Hospital; General Hospital Abbreviations ED: Emergency Department; WHO: World Health Organisation Author’s Contributions ON contributed to the design of the study, acquired, analysed and interpreted the data, drafted the initial manuscript, and revised the manuscript. AS contributed to the design of the study and critically reviewed the manuscript. KS conceptualised and designed the study, supervised data collection and analysis and critically reviewed the manuscript. All authors agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work and have ensured that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work have been appropriately investigated and resolved. JACOBS PUBLISHERS