Journal of the American Geriatrics Society
-
To examine age-specific differences in clinical presentation, receipt of therapeutic practices and lifestyle recommendations, and hospital and long-term survival in patients hospitalized for acute heart failure HF. ⋯ The results of this community-wide study suggest that clinical, treatment, and prognostic factors differ according to age in patients hospitalized for decompensated HF. These high-risk patients warrant special attention in future studies to improve their management and long-term survival.
-
To explore whether models of health behavior change can help to inform interventions for advance care planning (ACP). ⋯ The variability in participants' readiness, barriers and benefits, perceptions of susceptibility, and use of processes to increase readiness for participating in each component of ACP suggests the utility of customized, stage-specific interventions based on individualized assessments to improve ACP.
-
To validate two established frailty indexes and compare their ability to predict adverse outcomes in a diverse, elderly, community-dwelling sample of men and women. ⋯ Two established frailty indexes were validated using an independent elderly sample of diverse men and women; both indexes were good at distinguishing geriatric conditions and predicting recurrent falls, overnight hospitalization, and ED visits according to level of frailty. Although both indexes are good measures of frailty, the simpler SOF index may be easier and more practical in a clinical setting.