• Bmc Nephrol · Jan 2012

    Geriatric urolithiasis in the emergency department: risk factors for hospitalisation and emergency management patterns of acute urolithiasis.

    • Spyridon Arampatzis, Gregor Lindner, Filiz Irmak, Georg-Christian Funk, Heinz Zimmermann, and Aristomenis K Exadaktylos.
    • Department of Nephrology and Hypertension, Inselspital, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland. spyridon.arampatzis@insel.ch
    • Bmc Nephrol. 2012 Jan 1;13:117.

    BackgroundUrolithiasis is one of the most common conditions seen in emergency departments (ED) worldwide, with an increasing frequency in geriatric patients (>65 years). Given the high costs of emergency medical urolithiasis treatment, the need to optimise management is obvious. We aimed to determine risk factors for hospitalisation and evaluate diagnostic and emergency treatment patterns by ED physicians in geriatric urolithiasis patients to assist in optimising treatment.MethodsAfter receiving ethics committee approval, we examined the records of emergency urolithiasis admissions to our ED between January 2000 and December 2010 to determine risk factors for hospitalisation and to evaluate current diagnostic and emergency treatment patterns in geriatric urolithiasis patients.Results1,267 consecutive patients at least 20 years of age with confirmed urolithiasis (1,361 ED visits) and complete follow-up data were analyzed. Geriatric patients comprised 10% of urolithiasis patients with more than half of them experiencing their first urolithiasis episode at ED admission. Although stone site, side and size did not significantly differ between groups, urinary stone disease was more severe in the elderly. The risk of severe complications correlated with increasing age, female sex and diabetes mellitus. Geriatric patients had a two-fold greater likelihood of being hospitalised. A significantly lower percentage of geriatric patients received combined analgesic therapy for pain management (37% vs. 64%, p = <0.001) and supportive expulsive treatment (9% vs. 24%, p = <0.001).ConclusionGeriatric patients with urolithiasis have a higher morbidity than younger patients and may be undertreated concerning analgetic and expulsive treatment in ED.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…