TY - JOUR PY - 2019// TI - Management and orientation of geriatric patients admitted to emergencies for a fall: results of the French prospective OREGoN cohort study JO - Gériatrie et Psychologie Neuropsychiatrie du Vieillissement A1 - Gaudin, Anne-Claire A1 - Moumneh, Thomas A1 - Rivière, Hélène A1 - Roy, Pierre-Marie A1 - Annweiler, Cédric A1 - Brangier, Antoine SP - ePub EP - ePub VL - ePub IS - ePub N2 - Falls in older adults are a frequent reason for admission to the emergency department, associated with greater morbidity and mortality risks, and justify specialized geriatric expertise. Our objective was to determine i) the number of older fallers admitted to the emergency department for a serious fall, and ii) the proportion of those who were referred to a geriatrician in the following 12 months.

METHODS: We included all patients aged 75 and over admitted to the emergency department of the University hospital of Angers, France, for a fall between 1st October and 1st November 2015. The consensual criteria proposed by the French national authority for health (2009) were used to define serious falls.

RESULTS: Of the 214 older fallers admitted to the emergency department, 213 (99.5%) had at least one severity criterion for the fall. Only 40 older patients (18.7%) were referred to a geriatrician during the following 12 months. They exhibited more frequently a post-fall syndrome (p=0.007), more than 3 fall risk factors (p <0.001), and took more often an anticoagulant (p=0.032) than those who had not been referred to a geriatrician.

CONCLUSIONS: Although almost all older fallers admitted to the emergency room had experienced a serious fall, only a minority of them received a geriatric assessment in the following year.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 2115-8789 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1684/pnv.2019.0809 ID - ref1 ER -