The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) tracks emergency room (ER), hospital and doctor’s office visits among the American people each year. The CDC publishes this data in an annual report called the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, one of the National Health Statistics Reports. The data in this report include information on emergency room visits based on age and gender. The following is a list of the top 10 reasons patients visited the emergency room for adult males 15 years and older for 2006, the year for which the most recent data are available. After each reason, the number of visits appears in parentheses followed by the percentage that number represents out of all ER visits by this age group Overall, males aged 15 and older made 42,682,000 ER visits in 2006, representing 43.9% of all ER visits for this age group.

The top 10 reasons for ER visits among males aged 15 and older for 2006 are:

1. Chest pain and related symptoms (3,023,000 visits, 3.1%)
2. Stomach and abdominal pain or cramps (2,358,000 visits, 2.4%)
3. Back symptoms (1,517,000 visits, 1.6%)
4. Shortness of breath (1,256,000 visits, 1.3%)
5. Lacerations and cuts on the hand or arm (1,169,000 visits, 1.2%)
6. Pain, non-specific or poorly localized (1,077,000 visits, 1.1%)
7. Headache or other head pain (1,063,000 visits, 1.1%)
8. Leg symptoms (778,000 visits, 0.8%)
9. Dizziness or vertigo (677,000 vistis, 0.7%)
10. Motor vehicle accident, unspecified injuries (645,000 visits, 0.7%)

For more information on male health, join the Healia Health Community for Men’s Health.

_{Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, DHHS Publication No. (PHS) 2008–1250, August 2008. National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 2006 Emergency Department Summary, National Health Statistics Report No. 7}

_{Photo: Stephen Witherden, Filckr, Creative Commons}