Background: Older people frequently attend the emergency department (ED) and have a high risk of poor outcome\nas compared to their younger counterparts. Our aim was to study routinely collected clinical parameters as predictors\nof 90-day mortality in older patients attending our ED.\nMethods: We conducted a retrospective follow-up study at the Leiden University Medical Center (The Netherlands)\namong patients aged 70 years or older attending the ED in 2012. Predictors were age, gender, time and way of arrival,\npresenting complaint, consulting medical specialty, vital signs, pain score and laboratory testing. Cox regression\nanalyses were performed to analyse the association between these predictors and 90-day mortality.\nResults: Three thousand two hundred one unique patients were eligible for inclusion. Ninety-day mortality was 10.5 % for\nthe total group. Independent predictors of mortality were age (hazard ratio [HR] 1.06, 95 % confidence interval [95 % CI] 1.\n04-1.08), referral from another hospital (HR 2.74, 95 % CI 1.22-6.11), allocation to a non-surgical specialty (HR: 1.55, 95 % CI 1.\n13-2.14), increased respiration rate (HR up to 2.21, 95 % CI 1.25-3.92), low oxygen saturation (HR up to 1.96, 95 % CI 1.\n19-3.23), hypothermia (HR 2.27, 95 % CI 1.28-4.01), fever (HR 0.43, 95 % CI 0.24-0.75), high pain score (HR 1.55,\n95 % CI 1.03-2.32) and the indication to perform laboratory testing (HR 3.44, 95 % CI 2.13-5.56).\nConclusions: Routinely collected parameters at the ED can predict 90-day mortality in older patients presenting\nto the ED. This study forms the first step towards creating a new and simple screening tool to predict and\nimprove health outcome in acutely presenting older patients
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