The Type of Diseases in Elderly Patients

Kim, Seong Woo; Cha, Hyeong Soo

Abstract

BACKGROUND: It is a recent trend that the birth and mortality rates has been decreased and average life span prolonged in proportion to the socioeconomic and scientific advances. The goal of this study is to suggest basic data for comprehensive and continuous management of elderly patients.
METHODS
Based upon ICD-10 (International Classification of Disease), the author analysed the outpatient's diseases 19,367 and inpatient's diseases 6,783 beyond the age of 65 who visited outpatient department and were hospitalized to the Kosin University, Kosin Medical Center in Pusan from January to December in 1997
RESULTS
The ratio of elderly patient in outpatient was 4.5% and inpatient was 15.0%. The number of outpatient each disease group were disease of the circulatory system 5,367 (27.7%), neoplasms 4,007 (20.7%), disease of the digestive system 2,635 (13.6%), endocrine, nutritional and metabolic disease 1,798 (9.8%) in order. Frequent diseases in individual system of outpatient were followed; malignant neoplasms of digestive organs 2,642 (13.6%), hypertensive diseases 2,053 (10.6%), diseases of esophagus, stomach and duodenum 1,804 (9.3%), ischemic heart disease 1,101 (5.7%) in order. The number of inpatient each disease group were disease of the neoplasms 2,138 (31.5%), disease of circulatory system 1,191 (17.6%), disease of the digestive system 730 (10.8%), endocrine, nutritional and metabolic disease 489 (7.2%) in order. Frequent diseases in individual system of inpatient were followed; malignant neoplasms of digestive organs 956 (14.1%), malignant neoplasms of respiratory and intrathoracic organs 351 (5.2%), hypertensive diseases 348 (4.2%), diabetes mellitus 325 (4.1%) in older.
CONCLUSION
This result indicate that the elderly patients abounded mostly with disease of circulatory, neoplasm, disease of the digestive system and endocrine, nutritional and metabolic disease.