• Ahu Pakdemirli, Başak Bayram, Erkan Güvenç, and Hülya Ellidokuz.
• Department of Physiology, Gülhane School of Medicine, University of Health Sciences, Ankara, Turkey
• Turk J Med Sci. 2021 Jun 28; 51 (3): 1253-1260.

Background/AimAnalysis of interventions for special patient groups is important for the planning of health services, especially emergency medical services. In this study, we aimed to evaluate emergency medical service (EMS) interventions for the elderly and determine the decisive factors affecting transfer to the hospital of EMS team over 2 years (2017 and 2018) in İzmir.Materials And MethodsRecords of 112 emergency calls that were made between 2017 and 2018 followed up with interventions for patients aged 65 years and older were obtained from the 112 system. The reasons for the calls, outcomes, possible diagnoses of the patients, differences in time intervals and seasons, characteristics of the patients transferred to the hospital, and factors affecting the need for transfer to the hospital were investigated.ResultsA total of 176,104 elderly patients with a mean age of 78.02 ± 8.0 years required ambulance services, and out of them, 66% were transferred to the hospital. Transfer to the hospital was significantly associated with the event location, sex, time interval, international classification of diseases (ICD) codes, and physical examination findings.ConclusionAmbulance interventions are more frequently required in urban areas than in the countryside, and calls are mostly made during daytime hours and during winter months. The decision to transfer a patient to the hospital is based on the patient’s respiratory status, skin examination, state of consciousness, pulse, systolic blood pressure, call time, and the preliminary diagnosis of the crew.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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