Prospective evaluation of internal hospital requests for consultation of an Otolaryngology department.

This was a prospective study and analysis of the clinical nature and severity of consultation, patient age and sex, place of consultation, grade of attending doctor and management strategy of in-patients referred for a specialist opinion to a Department of Otolaryngology. Internal requests for consultation were evaluated at the North Manchester General Hospital between October 1999 and August 2000 (n = 101). Patients referred to the Otolaryngology department were of a varied clinical nature with head and neck complaints being the largest group. Forty-six of the patients had minor complaints. Patients were found to be predominantly male and older than 50 years of age. The grade of attending doctor was predominantly a Specialist Registrar and the management strategy was most frequently conservative. Many of the requests for consultation were regarding minor problems that could be referred to a routine out-patient clinic. There is a need to improve the indication criteria for internal consultation, as well as the information provided in them.