pre-hospital emergency in iran: a systematic review

conclusions the number of studies conducted on pre-hospital emergency services in iran is limited. to promote public health, consideration of prevention areas, processes to provide pre-hospital emergency services, policymaking, foresight, systemic view, comprehensive research programs and roadmaps, and assessments of research needs in pre-hospital emergency seem necessary. context pre-hospital care plays a vital role in saving trauma patients. objectives this study aims to review studies conducted on the pre-hospital emergency status in iran. data sources data were sourced from iranian electronic databases, including sid, iranmedex, irandoc, magiran, and non-iranian electronic databases, such as medline, embase, cochrane library, scopus, and google scholar. in addition, available data and statistics for the country were used. results a total of 19 articles were selected, including six descriptive studies (42%), four descriptive-analytical studies (21%), five review articles (16%), two qualitative studies (10.5%), and two interventional (experimental) studies (10.5%). in addition, of these, 14 articles (73.5%) had been published in the english language. the focus of these selected articles were experts (31.5%), bases of emergency medical services (26%), injured (16%), data reviews (16%), and employees (10.5%). a majority of the studies (68%) investigated pre-hospital emergency functions and 32% reviewed the pre-hospital emergency structure. data extraction to review the selected articles, a data extraction form developed by the researchers as per the study’s objective was adopted. the articles were examined under two categories: structure and function of pre-hospital emergency. data selection all persian-language articles published in iranian scientific journals and related english-language articles published in iranian and non-iranian journals indexed on valid sites for september 2005 - 2014 were systematically reviewed.