Emergency Medicine Management of the Elderly

Emergency medicine is a clinical field that consists of the knowledge required for the unscheduled diagnosis and management of acute illness including injury across all age groups and all fields of medicine. For any given chief complaint, elderly patients are more likely to have acute disease and worse outcomes. In the United States, there are approximately 50 emergency department visits per year for every 100 people over 65 years old. The US population is undergoing a major shift as “baby boomers” grow older causing a significant increase in the elderly population. According to the United States Census Bureau the over 65-year-old cohort has increased from 37 million in 2006 to 49 million in 2016. This is projected to reach 98 million by 2060. A large increase in emergency department visits by elderly patients can be expected in the United States. To meet the needs of geriatric patients, work has been done to improve the emergency care of this challenging population. These efforts include screening for particular markers of risk among the elderly such as frailty, fall risk and dementia, reducing delays in diagnosis and care, and a focus on the specific characteristics of surgical diseases in elderly patients presenting to emergency departments. In addition, criteria have been developed by the American College of Emergency Physicians in collaboration with the American Geriatric Society, the Emergency Nurses Association, and the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine for accrediting hospitals with an intensive focus on the emergency care of the elderly, the designated “geriatric emergency department.”