Tag Archives: elderly

General

Next Week: Trauma In The Elderly

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All of next week, I’ll be writing about a topic that is becoming more and more important: geriatric trauma. Our population is aging, and the number of older patients being admitted to trauma centers is exploding.

Here are the topics to be covered:

  • How We Take Care Of Our Elders
  • Thoughts On Geriatric Trauma
  • Elderly Trauma And The Frailty Index
  • The Medical Orthopaedic Trauma Service
  • Falls In The Elderly: The Consequences
  • Effect Of an In-Hospital Falls Prevention Program

And please feel free to leave comments and suggest future topics!

Trauma Center

EAST 2017 #13: An Extra Trauma Activation Tier For Geriatric Trauma

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Our elderly population is growing rapidly, and the average age of the patients on the trauma service is escalating. These patients offer a number of challenges throughout their presentation to the hospital and the rest of their stay. Some trauma centers are now organizing special teams or response types to deal with the unique needs of this population. A few have adopted a separate response type when injured elderly patients present to the ED.

The group at Reading Hospital  implemented a separate trauma activation tier, “Tier 3”, driven by emergency physicians, to manage these patients. Tier 3 was designed to identify patients > 65 years of age with the potential for occult blunt injury to the head and torso. The normal activation criteria at this center would not have necessarily identified these patients. This study retrospectively looked at demographics and outcomes for two separate three year periods, one before and one after implementation of Tier 3.

Here are the factoids:

  • Geriatric volume increased significantly from 1715 to 3688 patients (!!), and more received expedited workup as either a trauma activation or Tier 3
  • There were statistically significant decreases in time to CT (102 vs 128 minutes) and ED length of stay (361 vs 432 minutes) (see my comments)
  • Mortality decreased from 8% to 5% overall, and from 19% to 11% in patients with head AIS > 3, both of which were significant
  • Regression analysis showed that implementation of the Tier 3 response was an independent predictor of improved survival

Bottom line: This poster shows results that suggest having a specific response for select elderly patients who don’t meet trauma activation criteria can be beneficial. However, the devil is in the details. Each center must develop criteria for the Tier 3 response that mesh with their own activation criteria. And the details of that response need to be clinically significantly better than the usual consult response.

Questions and comments for the authors/presenters:

  1. Be careful not to confuse statistical significance with clinical significance. Decreasing mean time to CT from 2:08 to 1:42 is not that big of a deal. The same applies to 7 hours in the ED vs 6.
  2. Please share the Tier 3 criteria and details of the ED response.
  3. Have you modified your Tier 3 criteria and/or response since inception, and if so, how and why?

Click here to go the the EAST 2017 page to see comments on other abstracts.

Related posts:

Reference: “Tier 3”: Long term experience with a novel addition to a two-tiered triage system to expedite care of geriatric trauma patients.. Poster #34, EAST 2017.

Imaging

Pan Scanning for Elderly Falls?

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The last abstract for the Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons that I will review deals with doing a so-called “pan-scan” for ground level falls. Apparently, patients at this center have been pan-scanned for years, and they wanted to determine if it was appropriate.

This was a retrospective trauma registry review of 9 years worth of ground level falls. Patients were divided into young (18-54 years) and old (55+ years) groups. They were included in the study if they received a pan-scan.

Here are the factoids:

  • Hospital admission rates (95%) and ICU admission rates (48%) were the same for young and old
  • ISS was a little higher in the older group (9 vs 12)
  • Here are the incidence and type of injuries detected:
Young (n=328) Old (n=257)
TBI 35% 40%
C-spine 2% 2%
Blunt Cereb-vasc inj * 20% 31%
Pneumothorax 14% 15%
Abdominal injury 4% 2%
Mortality * 3% 11%

 * = statistically significant

Bottom line: There is an ongoing argument, still, regarding pan-scan vs selective scanning. The pan-scanners argue that the increased risk (much of which is delayed or intangible) is worth the extra information. This study shows that the authors did not find much difference in injury diagnosis in young vs elderly patients, with the exception of blunt cerebrovascular injury.

Most elderly patients who fall sustain injuries to the head, spine (all of it), extremities and hips. The torso is largely spared, with the exception of ribs. In my opinion, chest CT is only for identification of aortic injury, which just can’t happen from falling over. Or even down stairs. And solid organ injury is also rare in this group.

Although the future risk from radiation in an elderly patient is probably low, the risk from the IV contrast needed to see the aorta or solid organs is significant in this group. And keep in mind the dangers of screening for a low probability diagnosis. You may find something that prompts invasive and potentially more dangerous investigations of something that may never have caused a problem!

I recommend selective scanning of the head and cervical spine (if not clinically clearable), and selective conventional imaging of any other suspicious areas. If additional detail of the thoracic and/or lumbar spine are needed, specific spine CT imaging should be used without contrast.

Related posts:

Reference: Pan-scanning for ground level falls in the elderly: really? ACS Surgical Forum, trauma abstracts, 2016.

Hospital

Impact Of A Geriatric Trauma Service

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I previously wrote about the impact of adding a hospitalist to the trauma service to improve care of geriatric trauma patients. Method Dallas Medical Center created a specific geriatric trauma service, which they called the G-60 service, in 2009. They published their data after one year of experience in 2012.

All patients 60 years of age and older with injuries <48 hours old were admitted to a specific hospital unit. All admitted patients were seen immediately by the trauma surgeon and a hospitalist. Other involved services included rehab, palliative care, PT and OT, pharmacy, nutrition, respiratory therapy, and social work, as needed. The hospitalist was also tasked with expedited clearance for surgical procedures.

Time-to-care goals included G-60 service activation and ED evaluation within 30 minutes, admission to the G-60 unit within 4 hours, operative procedures (if needed) within 36 hours, and discharge within 5 days if appropriate. Multidisciplinary rounds with the full complement of personnel were held twice weekly.

A total of 393 patients were admitted to the G-60 service over a period of one year. A control group of 280 patients from the year before implementation were used for comparison.

Here are the factoids:

  • Mechanism of injury was blunt 98% of the time, as expected. Most were falls, and the frequency increased from 68% to 75% after implementation of G-60.
  • ICU admission rate remained steady at about 20%
  • Significant time-to-care decreases were seen in all 4 categories. ED length of stay decreased by 2 hours, and time to OR decreased by more than half a day.
  • Hospital length to stay decreased from 7 to 5 days, and ICU LOS decreased from 5 to 3 days. Both were statistically and financially significant.
  • There were significant decreases in the incidence of complications, including UTI, renal failure, CHF, ventilator associated pneumonia, and respiratory failure.
  • There was no change in DVT or PE rates.

Bottom line: Implementation of a multidisciplinary trauma service that addresses the special problems of injured elderly patients improves outcomes, and would appear to save a lot of money. I have observed a very obvious age shift in the trauma population at my own trauma center, and I know quite a few other trauma medical directors who are seeing the same thing. We are all going to need to develop the equivalent of a G-60 service to improve outcomes and reduce the financial challenges of taking care of these patients. However, using age 60 as the threshold will miss a number of elders who might benefit. Frailty measures and common sense will need to be taken into account to make sure all appropriate patients can benefit from this type of service.

Reference: Geriatric trauma service: A one-year experience. J Trauma 72(1):119-122, 2012.

Hospital

Adding A Hospitalist To The Trauma Service

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Hospitals are increasingly relying on a hospitalist model to deliver care to inpatients on medical services. These medical generalists are usually trained in general internal medicine, family medicine, or pediatrics and provide general hospital-based care. Specialists, both medical and surgical, may be consulted when needed.

In most higher level trauma centers in the US (I and II), major trauma patients are admitted to a surgical service (Trauma), and other nonsurgical specialists are consulted based on the needs of the patients and the competencies of the surgeons managing the patients. As our population ages, more and more elderly patients are admitted for traumatic injury, with more and more complex medical comorbidities.

Is there a benefit to adding medical expertise to the trauma service? A few studies have now looked at this, and I will review them over the next few days. The Level I trauma center at Christiana Care in Wilmington, Delaware embedded a trauma hospitalist (THOSP) in the trauma service. They participated in the care of trauma patients with coronary artery disease, CHF, arrhythmias, chronic diseases of the lung or kidneys, stroke, diabetes, or those taking anticoagulants.

The THOSP was consulted on appropriate patients upon admission, or during admission if one of the conditions was discovered later. They attended morning and afternoon sign-outs, and weekly multidisciplinary rounds. A total of 566 patients with hospitalist involvement were matched to controls, and ultimately 469 patients were studied.

Here are the factoids:

  • Addition of the THOSP resulted in a 1 day increase in hospital length of stay
  • Trauma readmissions decreased significantly from 2.4% to 0.6%
  • The number of upgrades to ICU status doubled, but ICU LOS remained the same
  • Mortality decreased significantly from 2.9% to 0.4%
  • The incidence of renal failure decreased significantly
  • Non-significant decreases in cardiovascular events, DVT/PE and sepsis were also noted
  • There was no difference in the number of medical specialty consults placed (cardiology, endocrinology, neurology, nephrology)

Bottom line: This paper shows some positive impact, along with some puzzling mixed results. The decrease in mortality and many complications is very positive. Was the increase in ICU transfers due to a different care philosophy in medical vs surgical personnel? And the failure to decrease the number of specialty consults was very disappointing to me. I would expect that having additional medical expertise on the team should make a difference there.

Was the THOSP really “embedded” if they were not involved in the regular daily rounds? In this case, they were present only for handoffs and for weekly multidisciplinary rounds. I believe that having them on the rounding team daily would be of huge benefit, allowing the surgeons and hospitalists to learn from each other. Plus, there should be a benefit to the residents in a Level I center, helping them broaden their ability to care for these complicated patients.

Tomorrow: The G-60 Geriatric Trauma Service 

Reference: Embedding a trauma hospitalist in the trauma service reduces mortality and 30-day trauma-related readmissions. J Trauma 81(1):178-183, 2016.