Introduction:

The evaluation of the patient with non-traumatic acute abdominal pain is a diagnostic challenge. The use of laboratory and cabinet tests are useful tools allowing to obtain complementary information about each patient and thereby confirm or rule out a diagnosis and determine its action plan.

Objective:

To estimate the frequency of use of laboratory and cabinet tests in the emergency department at the Regional General Hospital No.72, in patients with non-traumatic abdominal pain from August to September 2017.

Methods:

A retrospective, observational, cross-sectional and descriptive study was carried out. One hundred twenty six (126) clinical records of patients ≥20 years old were reviewed, these subjects attended the emergency room for non-traumatic acute abdominal pain, and had a stay of at least 8 hours. They underwent some laboratory and cabinet tests. Clinical records of pregnant women were excluded. The data was analyzed with descriptive statistics.

Results:

Eight hundred twenty seven (827) tests were performed on 126 patients. The main studies used were blood count (99.2%), glucose, urea, creatinine, electrolytes and coagulation times (in 100% of patients). The most used cabinet studies were ultrasound (31.7%) and abdominal tomography (11.9%). The five most prevalent pathologies were cholecystitis, urinary infection, gastroenteritis, acid peptic disease and pancreatitis.

Conclusions:

Abdominal pain is a pathology of multivariate etiology, so adequate study is essential for the management of people and the implementation of a quality management system focused on the patient.

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