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

Kim, Go Eun; Kim, Sunyoung; Won, Chang Won; Choi, Hyun Rim; Kim, Byung Sung; Cho, Yoon Je

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.