Abstract
India is the second-most populous country in the world has about 76.6 million people at or over the age of 60, constituting above 7.7% of total population. A cross-sectional study of 300 cases of geriatric and non-geriatric population groups was conducted at well-established Trauma, Orthopaedic and Neurosurgical services centre in Central India. Mechanisms of injury sustained by the participants showed that Falls which include both Ground level falls (GLF) and Fall from height (>2 metres) contributed to 55.4% cases in the geriatric population. The next most common cause of trauma in the geriatric population was road traffic accidents amounting to 34.3% of the cases. Data on the injuries sustained by both the study cohorts in terms of the different body regions based on Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) and Injury severity score (ISS) showed the head region was most consistently and maximally injured in both the study populations. Comorbidity profiles of geriatric and non-geriatric trauma populations showed significantly high hypertension, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes, diminished hearing and vision among the geriatric group. The maximum number of geriatric patients underwent Orthopaedic and spine surgeries (44.9%), Intercostal drain placements (34.6%), while the non-geriatric population had a higher number of Craniotomies (40%) and Intercostal drain placement (33.5%) surgeries respectively. The geriatric population had a significantly higher crude mortality rate of 39.3% compared to the non-geriatric population ( 26.3% ). With reference to intervention procedures, the geriatric population had a lower percentage of operative intervention and a higher rate of conservative management as compared to the non-geriatric population.
Highlights
Worldwide people are living longer with increased life expectancy
The results obtained from a comparative cross sectional study conducted on injury and trauma, mortality, morbidity in geriatric and non-geriatric patients admitted in a tertiary care trauma centre in central India is outlined below
A shown in Table 1, 36% of patients ground level falls had the least number of cases of 14 (4.7%) in this study showed Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score
Summary
Worldwide people are living longer with increased life expectancy. In the world's population, the aged and older population of age 60 years and above is expected to cross over by 2.1 billion by 2050. According to the WHO, 80% of all older people will live in low- and middle-income countries by 2050 [1] According to the State of World Population 2019 report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), released last week, India's population in 2019 stood at 1.36 billion, growing from 942.2 million in 1994 and six percent of India's population was of the age 65 and above [2]. The economic costs, as well as the societal cost are higher following trauma to elderly patients. The social and economic implications are expected to increase in geriatric trauma and clinicians must continue to strive toward a more standardized and evidence-based approach to the diagnosis and treatment of these patients
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