Medical History of Elderly Patients in the Emergency Setting: Not an Easy Point-of-Care Diagnostic Marker
Joint Authors
Möckel, Martin
Lindner, Tobias
Slagman, Anna
Senkin, Arthur
Searle, Julia
Source
Emergency Medicine International
Issue
Vol. 2015, Issue 2015 (31 Dec. 2015), pp.1-6, 6 p.
Publisher
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Publication Date
2015-09-03
Country of Publication
Egypt
No. of Pages
6
Main Subjects
Abstract EN
Background.
Medical histories are a crucially important diagnostic tool.
Elderly patients represent a large and increasing group of emergency patients.
Due to cognitive deficits, taking a reliable medical history in this patient group can be difficult.
We sought to evaluate the medical history-taking in emergency patients above 75 years of age with respect to duration and completeness.
Methods.
Anonymous data of consecutive patients were recorded.
Times for the defined basic medical history-taking were documented, as were the availability of other sources and times to assess these.
Results.
Data of 104 patients were included in the analysis.
In a quarter of patients (25%, n=26) no complete basic medical history could be obtained.
In the group of patients where complete data could be gathered, only 16 patients were able to provide all necessary information on their own.
Including other sources like relatives or GPs prolonged the time until complete medical history from 7.3 minutes (patient only) to 26.4 (+relatives) and 56.3 (+GP) minutes.
Conclusions.
Medical histories are important diagnostic tools in the emergency setting and are prolonged in the elderly, especially if additional documentation and third parties need to be involved.
New technologies like emergency medical cards might help to improve the availability of important patient data but implementation of these technologies is costly and faces data protection issues.
American Psychological Association (APA)
Lindner, Tobias& Slagman, Anna& Senkin, Arthur& Möckel, Martin& Searle, Julia. 2015. Medical History of Elderly Patients in the Emergency Setting: Not an Easy Point-of-Care Diagnostic Marker. Emergency Medicine International،Vol. 2015, no. 2015, pp.1-6.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1063904
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Lindner, Tobias…[et al.]. Medical History of Elderly Patients in the Emergency Setting: Not an Easy Point-of-Care Diagnostic Marker. Emergency Medicine International No. 2015 (2015), pp.1-6.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1063904
American Medical Association (AMA)
Lindner, Tobias& Slagman, Anna& Senkin, Arthur& Möckel, Martin& Searle, Julia. Medical History of Elderly Patients in the Emergency Setting: Not an Easy Point-of-Care Diagnostic Marker. Emergency Medicine International. 2015. Vol. 2015, no. 2015, pp.1-6.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1063904
Data Type
Journal Articles
Language
English
Notes
Includes bibliographical references
Record ID
BIM-1063904