Investigation of the relationship between emergency department applications and prognoses of geriatric patients

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the elderly population constituted 12% of the population of people over 60 years old in 2015. In the coming years, by 2030, 1 out of 6 people in the world will be 60 years or older, and this ratio will increase to 22% in 2050. In addition, it is estimated that the proportion of the elderly population will be 11.0% in 2025, 12.9% in 2030, 16.3% in 2040, 22.6% in 2060 and 25.6% in 2080. The number of admissions to the emergency services of geriatric patients, the hospital treatment process, and even the mortality and morbidity rates increase in elderly patients. In this direction, it was aimed to retrospectively analyze the data of patients over 65 who applied to a tertiary hospital emergency department and determine the factors affecting the mortality of geriatric patients. The presented study is a cross-sectional and retrospective study. All patients over the age of 65 who applied to the emergency department of Ordu University Medical Faculty Training and Research Hospital between 01 July 2022 and 31 2022 were retrospectively analyzed. Demographic features of the cases, the way they applied to the emergency room (112 Emergency Service Ambulance, others: with their own vehicle, by taxi, etc.), the last diagnosis in the emergency department (neurological, cardiovascular, respiratory, metabolic, trauma and others), treatment methods (outpatient, inpatient, intensive care), their motility and the relationship of these data with each other were examined. Between the specified dates, a total of 28459 patients over the age of 18 were admitted to the emergency department. It was determined that 10.16% (n=2894) of these patients consisted of patients over 65 years of age. The relationship between the treatment modalities and mortality according to the way the patients came to the hospital was found to be statistically significant (p<0.005). The relationship between hospitalization, treatment modalities and mortality was statistically significant according to the clinical diagnosis of the cases (p<0.005). In the presented study, it was determined that the mortality of patients who applied to the emergency department due to metabolic problems and who used the ambulance system as a referral tool was high. In fact, the prognosis of geriatric patients who apply to the emergency department for any reason, especially by using the emergency ambulance system, is worse than those who do not use the emergency ambulance system. For this reason, the use of an emergency ambulance system alone affects the prognosis negatively and it is necessary to evaluate such geriatric patients more carefully.