• Òscar Miró, Javier Jacob, Eric Jorge García-Lamberechts, Pascual Piñera Salmerón, Pere Llorens, Sònia Jiménez, Guillermo Burillo-Putze, Francisco Javier Montero-Pérez, Sira Aguiló, Adriana Gil-Rodrigo, Cesáreo Fernández Alonso, Aitor Alquézar-Arbé, Patricia Parra-Esquivel, Fortuny BayarriMaría JoséMJServicio de Urgencias, Hospital Francesc de Borja, Gandia, Valencia, España., Matilde González Tejera, Javier Millán Soria, Isabel Cirera, María Adroher, Enrique Martín Mojarro, Esther Gargallo García, Beatriz Valle, Ángel Díaz Salado, Martín Ruiz Grispán, María Pilar López Díez, Fahd Beddar Chaib, Manuel Salido Mota, Jorge Pedraza García, Gorreti Sánchez Sindín, Ricardo Juárez González, Rafael A Pérez Costa, Carmen Escudero Sánchez, Azucena Prieto Zapico, Juan González Del Castillo, and Red de investigación SIESTA.
• Área de Urgencias, Hospital Clínic, IDIBAPS, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, España.
• Emergencias. 2022 Dec 1; 34 (6): 418427418-427.

ObjectivesTo describe the sociodemographic characteristics of and the health care resources used to treat patients aged 65 years or older who come to hospital emergency departments (EDs) in Spain, according to age groups.Material And MethodsWe studied the phase-1 data for the EDEN cohort (Emergency Department and Elder Needs). Forty Spanish EDs collected data on all patients aged 65 years or older who were treated on the first 7 days in April 2019. We registered information on 6 sociodemographic and 5 function variables for all patients. For health resource use we used 6 diagnostic, 13 therapeutic, and 5 physical structural variables, for a total of 24 variables. Differences were analyzed according to age in blocks of 5 years.ResultsA total of 18 374 patients with a median age of 78 years were included; 55% were women. Twenty-seven percent arrived by ambulance, 71% had not previously been seen by a physician, and 13% lived alone without assistance. Ten percent had a high level of functional dependence, and 14% had serious comorbidity. Resources used most often were blood analysis (in 60%) and radiology (59%), analgesics (25%), intravenous fluids (21%), antibiotics (14%), oxygen (13%), and bronchodilators (11%). Twenty-six percent were kept under observation in the ED, 26% were admitted to wards, and 2% were admitted to intensive care units (ICUs). The median stay in the ED was 3.5 hours, and the median hospital stay was 7 days. Sociodemographic characteristics changed according to age. Functional dependence worsened with age, and resource requirements increased in general. However, benzodiazepine use was unaffected, while the use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and ICU admission decreased.ConclusionThe functional dependence of older patients coming to EDs increases with age and is associated with a high level of health care resource use, which also increases with age. Planners should take into consideration the characteristics of the older patients and the proportion of the caseload they represent when arranging physical spaces and designing processes for a specific ED.

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