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Spatial access to Emergency General Surgery (EGS) services and EGS bypass behaviours in California
Published in Annals of GIS, 2023
Jiuying Han, Neng Wan, Simon C. Brewer, Marta McCrum
Emergency General Surgery (EGS) represents a heterogeneous group of surgical conditions that require ‘emergent surgical evaluation (operative or non-operative) for diseases within the realm of general surgery as defined by the American Board of Surgery’ (Shafi et al. 2013). This includes conditions such as appendicitis, diverticulitis and bowel obstruction. There are nearly 3 million patients in the United States admitted with an EGS condition annually, exceeding other public health problems, such as newly diagnosed cancers or new onset diabetes (Becher et al. 2018). Moreover, EGS represents a high-risk patient population with up to eight times higher mortality compared to patients who undergo similar elective operations (Scott et al. 2018). The high burden of disease and mortality rate suggests an urgent need for improving EGS health care services.