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In the era of emergency department crowding, validation of triage systems that identify patients who can wait safely and those who need immediate intervention is especially critical. The Manchester triage system is a computerized complaint-based algorithm with 52 pathways (49 suitable for children) that uses six key discriminators (life threat, pain, hemorrhage, acuteness of onset, level of consciousness, and temperature) to sort patients into one of five urgency categories, corresponding to maximum waiting time:
Immediate — 0 minutes
Very urgent — 10 minutes
Urgent — 60 minutes
Standard — 120 minutes
Nonurgent — 240 minutes
Dutch researchers performed a prospective observational study of 17,600 children (age, <16 years) to evaluate performance o…