Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health

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Volume 5, Issue 3, September 2015, Pages 259 - 264

Symptom clusters on primary care medical service trips in five regions in Latin America

Authors
Christopher Daintona, *, Christopher.dainton@gmail.com, Charlene Chub
aChatham Kent Health Alliance, 921-650 Queen’s Quay West, Toronto, ON M5V3N2, Canada
bUniversity of Toronto, Canada
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 416 884 7231.
Corresponding Author
Received 9 October 2014, Revised 4 December 2014, Accepted 16 December 2014, Available Online 29 January 2015.
DOI
10.1016/j.jegh.2014.12.002How to use a DOI?
Keywords
Medical service trips; Epidemiology; Latin America; Primary care
Abstract

Short-term primary care medical service trips organized by the North American non-governmental organizations (NGOs) serve many communities in Latin America that are poorly served by the national health system. This descriptive study contributes to the understanding of the epidemiology of patients seen on such low-resource trips. An analysis was conducted on epidemiologic data collected from anonymized electronic medical records on patients seen during 34 short-term medical service trips in five regions in Ecuador, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic between April 2013 and April 2014. A total of 22,977 patients were assessed by North American clinicians (physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants) on primary care, low-resource medical service trips. The majority of patients were female (67.1%), and their average age was 36. The most common presenting symptoms in all regions were general pain, upper respiratory tract symptoms, skin disorders, eye irritation, dyspepsia, and nonspecific abdominal complaints; 71–78% of primary care complaints were easily aggregated into well-defined symptom clusters. The results suggest that guideline development for clinicians involved in these types of medical service trips should focus on management of the high-yield symptom clusters described by these data.

Copyright
© 2015 Ministry of Health, Saudi Arabia. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Open Access
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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<Previous Article In Issue
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Journal
Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health
Volume-Issue
5 - 3
Pages
259 - 264
Publication Date
2015/01/29
ISSN (Online)
2210-6014
ISSN (Print)
2210-6006
DOI
10.1016/j.jegh.2014.12.002How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2015 Ministry of Health, Saudi Arabia. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Open Access
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Cite this article

risenwbib
TY  - JOUR
AU  - Christopher Dainton
AU  - Charlene Chu
PY  - 2015
DA  - 2015/01/29
TI  - Symptom clusters on primary care medical service trips in five regions in Latin America
JO  - Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health
SP  - 259
EP  - 264
VL  - 5
IS  - 3
SN  - 2210-6014
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jegh.2014.12.002
DO  - 10.1016/j.jegh.2014.12.002
ID  - Dainton2015
ER  -