- Title
- Major trauma in the older patient: evolving trauma care beyond management of bumps and bruises
- Creator
- Carpenter, Christopher R.; Arendts, Glenn; Hullick, Carolyn; Nagaraj, Guruprasad; Cooper, Zara; Burkett, Ellen
- Relation
- Emergency Medicine Australasia Vol. 29, Issue 4, p. 450-455
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1742-6723.12785
- Publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- Two‐thirds of female and one‐third of male injury‐related deaths occur in those over age 65 years. Falls account for 73% of cases of major trauma in patients over age 65 with road trauma constituting the majority of the remainder. As injurious standing level falls and fall prevention will be reviewed later in this series, this article focuses on major trauma and geriatric management. Hospitalisations for injury‐related issues continue to increase among ageing baby‐boomers prompting increasing focus on these scenarios. After adjusting for Injury Severity Score, geriatric trauma victims have twice the mortality of younger patients and significantly longer intensive care unit (ICU) and hospital stays. Unfortunately, even minor geriatric trauma that does not require hospital admission can be associated with functional decline and preventable re‐presentations to the ED. Increasing age has been recognised as one determinant of survival and post‐trauma functional recovery for decades, but age alone is an insufficient marker for futility because some ageing trauma victims will benefit from aggressive trauma resuscitation.
- Subject
- elderly; geriatric; hospitalisation; triage; clinical thresholds
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1400886
- Identifier
- uon:34829
- Identifier
- ISSN:1742-6731
- Language
- eng
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