Abstract
Adequate care planning for a heterogeneously aging population is a challenge, because there is notable variation in the way older people react to illness and trauma. We also know that elderly patients have higher rates of visits to urgent/emergency departments (ED) worldwide, due to the complexity and severity of underlying diseases and comorbidities. In this article will be described the results regarding the socio-demographic variables of 1373 emergency episodes, by elderly people. The study reveals that most users are women, and the average age is around 82 years, 40.93% used the emergency department two or more times in the last year; and already reveals some worrying data with most of the elderly having low levels of education, living alone or with insufficient social support, polymedication, and with high levels of frailty. In addition, the prevalence of frailty is expected to increase along with the rapid growth of the elderly population. Understanding and managing frailty will likely form a major component of future care strategies around the world.
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The research work on this paper was supported by the Isabel Correia de Levy Investigation Grant - 2020 edition, from the Portuguese Association in Palliative Care.
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Simões, Â. (2023). Sociodemographic Characteristics of Elderly People Using the Emergency Department. Initial Data. In: Guardado Moreira, M.J., A. Carvalho, L.S., Sequeira Gonçalves, P.J., Barreiros Pinheira, V.M. (eds) Longevity and Development: New perspectives on Ageing Communities . Age.Comm 2021. Lecture Notes in Bioengineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-22273-3_6
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