• Olivier Beauchet, Shek Fung, Cyrille P Launay, Jonathan Afilalo, Paul Herbert, Marc Afilalo, and Julia Chabot.
• Department of Medicine, Division of Geriatric Medicine, Sir Mortimer B. Davis - Jewish General Hospital and Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Dr. Joseph Kaufmann Chair in Geriatric Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Centre of Excellence on Longevity of McGill integrated University Health Network, Quebec, Canada. Electronic address: olivier.beauchet@mcgill.ca.
• Maturitas. 2018 Sep 1; 115: 110-114.

ObjectiveMorbidities and related disabilities often lead to older inpatients having a long hospital stay. The aim of this study was to examine whether the 6-item brief geriatric assessment (BGA), developed and validated in France to determine a priori levels of risk of a long hospital stay (i.e.; low, moderate, high), could be successfully used with patients admitted to a geriatric assessment unit (GAU) in Quebec.Study DesignObservational retrospective cohort design.SettingA GAU of a McGill University affiliated hospital (Montreal, Quebec, Canada).Participants499 inpatients (84.7 ± 7.2 years; 73.3% female) recruited upon their admission.Main Outcome MeasuresThe BGA comprises 6 items: age > 85 years, male gender, ≥ 5 drugs per day, use of home-help support, history of falls and temporal disorientation. It was administered at baseline and a priori levels of risk of a long hospital stay (i.e., low, moderate, high) were determined. Length of hospital stay (LHS, in days) was calculated using the hospital registry. The association between a priori levels of risk from the BGA and LSH was examined using regression models and Kaplan-Meier curves.ResultsThe LHS increased with the 6-item BGA a priori level of risk (P = 0.010). High-risk (Hazard ratio (HR) = 1.68 with P < 0.001) and moderate-risk (HR = 1.24 with P = 0.039) of a long hospital stay successfully predicted a long stay. Kaplan-Meier distributions of time to discharge showed that inpatients classified as having high and moderate risk levels for a long hospital stay were discharged later than those with a low risk level (P < 0.001 and P = 0.013).ConclusionThe 6-item BGA a priori levels of risk for a long hospital stay successfully predicted a long stay among patients admitted to a GAU in Quebec.Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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