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Geriatric Emergency Medicine pp 111–125Cite as

Pitfalls in the Management of Older Patients in the Emergency Department

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Abstract

This chapter summarises common pitfalls when evaluating older patients in the emergency department and bullet-point list below gives a glimpse of the chapter:

  • Vital signs in older frail people with several comorbidities can be misleading as reference values differ from younger people. Single-point measurements in the ED should be compared to each individual’s baseline values (when accessible).

  • Atypical presentations of pneumonia, for example, are common in frail older people and may only include altered mental state such as confusion, high respiratory rate and an acute decline in functional status.

  • One third of all the ADE-related ED visits refer to intake of one of these three medications: warfarin, insulin and digoxin. Tools such as STOPP-START can help guide clinical practice.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Section of Emergency Medicine, Department of Clinical Research & Education, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Fredrik Sjöstrand

  2. Emergency Department, University Hospital Basel, Petersgraben 2, CH-4032, Basel, Switzerland

    Christian Nickel

Authors
  1. Fredrik Sjöstrand
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  2. Christian Nickel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fredrik Sjöstrand .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Emergency Department, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Christian Nickel

  2. Department of Emergency Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Abdelouahab Bellou

  3. Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    Simon Conroy

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Sjöstrand, F., Nickel, C. (2018). Pitfalls in the Management of Older Patients in the Emergency Department. In: Nickel, C., Bellou, A., Conroy, S. (eds) Geriatric Emergency Medicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19318-2_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19318-2_7

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