Aging clinical and experimental research
-
Multicenter Study
Admission profile is predictive of outcome in acute hospital care.
The purpose of this study is to describe predictors for discharge and one-year outcomes of acute-care hospital patients, 75 years of age or over, based on admission status information. We carried out a prospective study of a randomly selected patient population, from one urban acute-care hospital in each of the Nordic countries. 763 persons aged 75+ were randomly selected from acute admissions to the participating hospitals. 749 observations at discharge and 655 observations at one year were used in analyses. ⋯ Evidence predictive of discharge and one-year outcomes in older acute hospital medical care patients seems to be visible from the beginning of the hospital stay. In order to increase the efficient use of health care services and quality of care, systematic standardized and streamlined assessment should be performed during the admission process.
-
Amiodarone is a class III antiarrhythmic agent with a long half-life which is used to control atrial and ventricular arrhythmias, including atrial flutter and fibrillation. We describe here the case of an elderly woman (77 years of age) who was hospitalized for acute atrial fibrillation, abdominal pain, and dyspnea. ⋯ Complete recovery of liver function was documented after three weeks. Unfortunately, the patient died from a severe infectious disease, with multiple organ failure.