Unaccompanied minors' consultation reasons for encounter and health problems managed in a permanence of access to health care

Abstract

To describe the unaccompanied minors' reasons for consulting and their health problems managed in a permanence of access to health care (PASS) at the Hospices civils de Lyon. Consultation data of the unaccompanied minors cared for in 2016 and 2017 at the Edouard Herriot Hospital PASS, Lyon, were collected and coded according to the International Classification of Primary Care (CISP-2). The majority of unaccompanied minors were male adolescents from French-speaking sub-Saharan African countries. Each consultation included an average of 1.6 reason for encounter (95%CI: 1.5-1.8) and 2.0 health problems diagnosed (95%CI: 1.9-2.1). Apart from the discussion of test results, the most frequent reasons for consultation were physical symptoms, particularly generalized abdominal pain (8.7%), headache (6.6%) or pruritus (6.5%). Health problems diagnosed were mainly digestive (11.4%), cutaneous (11.0%) and osteoarticular (7.0%) problems, psychic diagnoses being rare. Unaccompanied minors seems to be apparently in good health, which probably results from under-diagnosing infectious diseases and psychic disorders. We recommend the implementation in the PASS of a common protocol for screening infectious conditions and detecting psychic disorders.