Weakness as presenting symptom in the emergency department

Methods This observational, prospective study of consecutive patients with a presenting symptom of weakness was conducted at the ED of Basel University Hospital, Switzerland. Over a 4-week period all non-trauma patients (aged 18 years and over) subsequently admitted to the hospital were screened for inclusion. Trained ED nurses registered the presenting symptoms of all new patients with an emergency severity index (ESI) of 1–3. Patients were included if weakness was recorded by the ED nurse and the patient complained of either localised or generalised weakness within the first 3 sentences of the history as taken by the ED physician. The final diagnosis was determined by an expert panel of at least two board-certified internal medicine specialists after chart reviews in all cases. Diagnoses were classified according to World Health Organization (WHO) ICD10 [4].