A study of clinical profile of acute medical illnesses in geriatric patients

Patel PR, Patel KJ, Patel B

Pdf Page Numbers :- 87-92

Prasanna Ratilal Patel^1,*, Keyurkumar Jashvantbhai Patel¹ and Bhavesh Patel¹

¹Department of General Medicine, GMERS Medical College, Valsad, Gujarat 396001, India

*Corresponding author: Dr Prasanna Ratilal Patel, Assistant professor, Department of General Medicine, GMERS Medical College, Valsad, Gujarat 396001, India. Email: sanna2171@gmail.com

Received 11 September 2023; Revised 2 December 2023; Accepted 9 December 2023; Published 20 December 2023

Citation: Patel PR, Patel KJ, Patel B. A study of clinical profile of acute medical illnesses in geriatric patients. J Med Sci Res. 2024; 12(1):87-92. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17727/JMSR.2024/12-16

Copyright: © 2024 Patel PR et al. Published by KIMS Foundation and Research Center. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Abstract

Background: Population aging is transforming the world. Elderly people are the most rapidly growing population group worldwide, which eventually include India also. The objective of the study was to provide the health care needs of this growing numbers of the vulnerable heterogeneous population, reliable data are still lacking and with recognition of the need the present study was designed.

Materials and methods: A prospective observational study which was conducted at the department of medicine, Civil Hospital, Ahmedabad for the duration of 2 years, in which total 100 patients who was ≥65 years of age with acute emergency illness were included and data were collected.

Results: Patients had common symptoms like breathlessness (45%) and giddiness (39%) and commonly encountered clinical conditions were cerebrovascular stroke (31%) and acute LVF (19%). Hypertension was the most common disease associated with CV stroke, acute LVF and IHD. Hypertension (44) and hypertension and diabetes (40) together were the commonly encountered co-morbidities. Most patients with co-morbidities were found complaint to their medicines. Among study participants, 87% of diabetics had also hypertension as compared to 81.5% nondiabetics who were suffering from hypertension.

Conclusion: Most common acute medical illness in geriatric population is due to the chronic co-morbid conditions. It is crucial to maintain chronic morbidity in a timely manner to minimize the complication. Post-acute care may be aimed to promote the functional recovery of older adults, prevent unnecessary hospital readmission, and avoid premature admission to a long-term care facility.

Keywords: geriatric; acute illness; prospective; aging