Abstract

CINZA SANJURJO, S.; CABARCOS ORTIZ DE BARRON, A.; NIETO POL, E.  and  LORENZO ZUNIGA, V.. Epidemiologic analises of elderly patients in an Internal Medicine department. An. Med. Interna (Madrid) [online]. 2006, vol.23, n.9, pp.411-415. ISSN 0212-7199.

Objetives: To study the characteristics of the entered patients in an Internal Medicine department. Patients and Methods: Descriptive and observational study with the admissions elder than 65 years old in an Internal Medicine Department during the year 2002. The variables analized were: age, sex, intake date, discharge date, days of hospital stay, chronic disease previous, reason for admission (guide symptom), deceased and diagnosis at discharge. The statistical analysis was performed with measures of central tendency and of standard deviation, Chi-cuadrado, Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon. Results: 770 patients were accepted for the study. The distribution in sex is similar, although the women show bigger median age. The most frequent chronic disease was isquemic hipertensive heart disease (25.7%) and the 64.9% of the patients have someone cardiovascular risk factor. The men show more cardiovascular risk factor and more chronic disease (p < 0.01). The most frequent was the dyspnea (42.7%). The most frequent diagnosis was the cardiac failure (20.6%). The 16.6% of the patients died in the hospital, and the most frequent diagnosis was respiratory tract infection (49.5%). Conclusions: The most frequents pathologies are the cardiopulmonary chronic disease of developed countries. The primary and secondary prevention and an improvement of chronic cardiopulmonary disease would be an effective way of cost control in these disease.

Keywords : Epidemiology; Aged; Internal Medicine.

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