Every year, the CDC publishes an annual report called the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, one of its National Health Statistics Reports. The data in this report include information on emergency room (ER) visits based on age and gender. The following is a list of the top 10 reasons patients visited the emergency room for adult females 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 people of this age group.

Previously, we posted the top 10 reasons for ER visits for males aged 15 and older. As you will see, the top reasons that older teen and adult females end up in the ER over are somewhat different than the reasons for males. Females also make more ER visits: overall, females aged 15 and older made 54,633,000 visits to the ER in 2006, representing 56.1 % 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. Stomach and abdominal pain or cramp (5,062,000 visits, 5.2%)
2. Chest pain and related symptoms (3,212,000 visits, 3.3%)
3. Headache or other head pain (1,923,000 visits, 2.0%)
4. Back symptoms (1,692,000 visits, 1.7%)
5. Shortness of breath (1,583,000 visits, 1.6%)
6. Pain, non-specific or poorly localized (1,303,000 visits, 1.3%)
7. Throat symptoms (1,148,000 visits, 1.2%)
8. Nausea (1,065,000 visits, 1.1%)
9. Cough (966,000 visits, 1.0%)
10. Dizziness or vertigo (952,000 visits, 1.0%)

For more information on women’s health, join the Healia Health Community for Women’s Health.

Related blog post: Top 10 Reasons for ER Visits Among Males 15 and Older

_{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: Mark Coggins, Flickr, Creative Commons}