Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment for Elderly Orthopedic Inpatients Consulted by Geriatric Medicine in a Hospital

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: With a rapidly aging population, more elderly patients are being hospitalized than before. Thus, a comprehensive geriatric assessment medium is needed to carefully evaluate geriatric patients. The author's university hospital has a geriatric medicine team to where patients are referred for comprehensive evaluations. Their services will be introduced here. METHODS: From December 2010 to January 2012, the team performed comprehensive geriatric assessments comprising of a thorough review of systems, physical examination, and surveys, and reviewed past medical records of the elderly hospitalized patients aged 65 or over, referred from the Department of Orthopedics. RESULTS: Of total 58 patients, 4 patients (6.9%) had severe dysfunction in the activities of daily living with the score of 16 or higher. Twenty-two patients (73.3%) had cognitive impairment or dementia upon assessing cognitive function after excluding those previously diagnosed with dementia or those within 5 days after surgery, thus predisposed to delirium who had tested mini mental state examination for cognitive function level test. Fifteen patients (31.3%) had mild depression, while four (8.3%) had moderate depression; and 37 patients (67.3%) were at moderate risk and five (9.1%) were at high risk for developing delirium. CONCLUSION: A comprehensive evaluation of the functional status of elderly hospitalized patients was helpful in detecting medical problems other than the initial diagnosis. A significant proportion of the elderly patients we assessed were suspected to have cognitive impairment.